lMlPf^lFlOT 


ROBEET    ELSMEEE 


ROBERT    ELSMERE 

//  t    '  ^  «r 

j4»-<    &   •^A^-C*-'     '  » 


BY 

MRS.    HUMPHRY    WARD 

AUTHOR  OF   'MISS  BHETHERTON ' 


London 

MACMILLAN    AND    CO. 

AND   NEW   YORK 

1888 

All  riyhts  reserved 


Printed  by  R.  &  K.  Cl.AKK,  Edinburg 


ta  Hit 

OF 

MY   TWO   FRIENDS, 

SEPARATED,    IN   MY  THOUGHT  OF  THEM,    BY   MUCH   DIVERSITY   OF 

CIRCUMSTANCE  AND  OPINION  ; 

LINKED,    IN   MY   FAITH   ABOUT  THEM,    TO   EACH   OTHER, 

AND  TO   ALL  THE  SHINING   ONES  OF  THE  PAST, 

BY  THE   LOVE  OF   GOD  AND  THE 

SERVICE  OF  MAN: 

THOMAS    HILL   GREEN 

(LATE  PROFESSOR  OF  MORAL  PHILOSOPHY  IN  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  OXFORD), 
Died  2Qth  March  1882; 

AND 

LAURA  OCTAVIA  MARY  LYTTELTON, 

Died  Easter  Eve  1886. 


CONTENTS 


BOOK    I 

PAOM 

WESTMORELAND     .  1 


BOOK    II 
SURREY  .        .        . * .        .         .140 

BOOK    III 
THE  SQUIRE 251 

BOOK    IV 
CRISIS 333 

BOOK    V 
ROSE 387' 

BOOK    VI 
NEW  OPENINGS .     461 

BOOK    VII 
GAIN  AND  Lost;  549 


NOTE 

The  quotations  given  in  the  present  book  on  pp.  58,  330,  and 
536,  are  either  literally  or  substantially  taken  from  a  volume  of 
Lay  Sermons,  called  The  Witness  of  God,  by  the  late  Professor 
T.  H.  Green. 


BOOK  I 

WESTMOKELAXD 


CHAPTER   I 

IT  was  a  brilliant  afternoon  towards  the  end  of  May.  The 
spring  had  been  unusually  cold  and  late,  and  it  was  evident 
from  the  general  aspect  of  the  lonely  Westmoreland  valley  of 
Long  Whindale  that  warmth  and  sunshine  had  only  just  pene- 
trated to  its  bare  green  recesses,  where  the  few  scattered  trees 
were  fast  rushing  into  their  full  summer  dress,  while  at  their 
feet,  and  along  the  bank  of  the  stream,  the  flowers  of  March  and 
April  still  lingered,  as  though  they  found  it  impossible  to  believe 
that  their  rough  brother,  the  east  wind,  had  at  last  deserted 
them.  The  narrow  road,  which  was  the  only  link  between  the 
farmhouses  sheltered  by  the  crags  at  the  head  of  the  valley  and 
those  far-away  regions  of  town  and  civilisation  suggested  by  the 
smoke  wreaths  of  Whinborough  on  the  southern  horizon,  was 
lined  with  masses  of  the  white  heckberry  or  bird-cherry,  and  ran, 
an  arrowy  line  of  white,  through  the  greenness  of  the  sloping 
pastures.  The  sides  of  some  of  the  little  becks  runnfng  down 
into  the  main  river  and  many  of  the  plantations  round  the  farms 
were  gay  with  the  same  tree,  so  that  the  farmhouses,  gray-roofed 
and  gray-walled,  standing  in  the  hollows  of  the  fells,  seemed 
here  ana  there  to  have  been  robbed  of  all  their  natural  austerity 
of  aspect,  and  to  be  masquerading  in  a  dainty  garb  of  white  and 
green  imposed  upon  them  by  the  caprice  of  the  spring. 

During  the  greater  part  of  its  course  the  valley  of  Long  Whin- 
dale  is  tame  and  featureless.  The  hills  at  the  lower  part  are 
low  and  rounded,  and  the  sheep  and  cattle  pasture  over  slopes 
unbroken  either  by  wood  or  rock.  The  fields  are  bare  and  close 
shaven  by  the  flocks  which  feed  on  them  ;  the  walls  run  either 
perpendicularly  in  many  places  up  the  fells  or  horizontally  along 
them,  so  that,  save  for  the  wooded  course  of  the  tumbling  river 
and  the  bush-grown  hedges  of  the  road,  the  whole  valley  looks 
like  a  green  map  divided  bv  regular  lines  of  grayish  black.  But 
as  the  walker  penetrates  farther,  beyond  a  certain  bend  which 
the  stream  makes  half  way  from  the  head  of  the  dale,  the  hills 
grow  steeper,  the  breadth  between  them  contracts,  the  enclosure 
lines  are  broken  and  deflected  by  rocks  and  patches  of  planta- 
tion, and  the  few  farms  stand  more  boldly  and  conspicuously 


4  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

forward,  each  on  its  spur  of  land,  looking  up  to  or  away  from 
the  great  masses  of  frowning  crag  which  close  in  the  head  of  the 
valley,  and  which  from  the  moment  they  come  into  sight  give  it 
dignity  and  a  wild  beauty. 

On  one  of  these  solitary  houses,  the  afternoon  sun,  about  to 
descend  before  very  long  behind  the  hills  dividing  Long  Whin- 
dale  from  Shanmoor,  was  still  lingering  on  this  May  afternoon 
we  are  describing,  bringing  out  the  whitewashed  porch  and  the 
broad  bands  of  white  edging  the  windows  into  relief  against  the 
gray  stone  of  the  main  fabric,  the  gray  roof  overhanging  it,  and 
the  group  of  sycamores  and  Scotch  firs  which  protected  it  from 
the  cold  east  and  north.  The  western  light  struck  full  on  a 
copper  beech,  which  made  a  welcome  patch  of  warm  colour  in 
front  of  a  long  gray  line  of  outhouses  standing  level  with  the 
house,  and  touched  the  heckberry  blossom  which  marked  the 
upward  course  of  the  little  lane  connecting  the  old  farm  with 
the  road  ;  above  it  rose  the  green  fell,  broken  here  and  there  by 
jutting  crags,  and  below  it  the  ground  sank  rapidly  through  a 
piece  of  young  hazel  plantation,  at  this  present  moment  a  sheet 
of  bluebells,  towards  the  level  of  the  river.  There  was  a  dainty 
and  yet  sober  brightness  about  the  whole  picture.  Summer  in 
the  North  is  for  Nature  a  time  of  expansion  and  of  joy  as  it  is 
elsewhere,  but  there  is  none  of  that  opulence,  that  sudden 
splendour  and  superabundance,  which  mark  it  in  the  South.  In 
these  bare  green  valleys  there  is  a  sort  of  delicate  austerity 
even  in  the  summer ;  the  memory  of  winter  seems  to  be  still 
lingering  about  these  wind-swept  fells,  about  the  farmhouses, 
with  their  rough  serviceable  walls,  of  the  same  stone  as  the  crags 
behind  them,  and  the  ravines,  in  which  the  shrunken  becks 
trickle  musically  down  through  the  debris  of  innumerable 
Decembers.  The  country  is  blithe,  but  soberly  blithe.  Nature 
shows  herself  delightful  to  man,  but  there  is  nothing  absorbing 
or  intoxicating  about  her.  Man  is  still  well  able  to  defend  him- 
self against  her,  to  live  his  own  independent  life  of  labour  and 
of  will,  and  to  develop  the  tenacity  of  hidden  feeling,  that  slowly 
growing  intensity  of  purpose,  which  is  so  often  Aviled  out  of  him 
by  the  spells  of  the  South. 

The  distant  aspect  of  Burwood  Farm  differed  in  nothing  from 
that  of  the  few  other  farmhouses  which  dotted  the  fells  or  clus- 
tered beside  the  river  between  it  and  the  rocky  end  of  the  valley. 
But  as  one  came  nearer,  certain  signs  of  difference  became  visible. 
The  garden,  instead  of  being  the  old-fashioned  medley  of  phloxes, 
lavender  bushes,  monthly  roses,  gooseberry  trees,  herbs,  and 
pampas  grass,  with  which  the  farmers'  wives  of  Long  Whindale 
loved  to  nil  their  little  front  enclosures,  was  trimly  laid  down  in 
turf  dotted  with  neat  flower-beds,  full  at  the  moment  we  are 
writing  of  with  orderly  patches  of  scarlet  and  purple  anemones, 
wallflowers,  and  pansies.  At  the  side  of  the  house  a  new  bow 
window,  modest  enough  in  dimensions  and  make,  had  been 
thrown  out  on  to  another  close-shaven  piece  of  lawn,  and  by  its 


CHAP,  i  WESTMORELAND  5 

suggestion  of  a  distant  sophisticated  order  of  things  disturbed 
the  homely  impression  left  by  the  untouched  ivy-grown  walls, 
the  unpretending  porch,  and  wide  slate  window-sills  of  the  front. 
And  evidently  the  line  of  sheds  standing  level  with  the  dwelling- 
house  no  longer  sheltered  the  animals,  the  carts,  or  the  tools  which 
make  the  small  capital  of  a  Westmoreland  farmer.  The  windows 
in  them  were  new,  the  doors  fresh  painted  and  closely  shut ;  cur- 
tains of  some  soft  outlandish  make  showed  themselves  in  what 
had  once  been  a  stable,  and  the  turf  stretched  smoothly  up  to  a 
narrow  gravelled  path  in  front  of  them,  unbroken  by  a  single 
footmark.  No,  evidently  the  old  farm,  for  such  it  undoubtedly 
was,  had  been  but  lately,  or  comparatively  lately,  transformed 
to  new  and  softer  uses ;  that  rough  patriarchal  life  of  which 
it  had  once  been  a  symbol  and  centre  no  longer  bustled  and 
clattered  through  it.  It  had  become  the  shelter  of  new  ideals, 
the  home  of  another  and  a  milder  race  than  once  possessed  it. 

In  a  stranger  coming  upon  the  house  for  the  first  time,  on 
this  particular  evening,  the  sense  of  a  changing  social  order 
and  a  vanishing  past  produced  by  the  slight  but  significant 
modifications  it  had  undergone,  would  have  been  greatly  quick- 
ened by  certain  sounds  which  were  streaming  out  on  to  the 
evening  air  from  one  of  the  divisions  of  that  long  one-storied 
addition  to  the  main  dwelling  we  have  already  described.  Some 
indefatigable  musician  inside  was  practising  the  violin  with 
surprising  energy  and  vigour,  and  within  the  little  garden 
the  distant  murmur  of  the  river  and  the  gentle  breathing  of 
the  west  wind  round  the  fell  were  entirely  conquered  and 
banished  by  these  triumphant  shakes  and  turns,  or  by  the 
nourishes  and  the  broad  cantabile  passages  of  one  of  Spohr's 
Andantes.  For  a  while,  as  the  sun  sank  lower  and  lower  towards 
the  Shanmoor  hills,  the  hidden  artist  had  it  all  his,  or  her,  own 
way  ;  the  valley  and  its  green  spaces  seemed  to  be  possessed  by 
this  stream  of  eddying  sound,  and  no  other  sign  of  life  broke 
the  gray  quiet  of  the  house.  But  at  last,  just  as  the  golden  ball 
touched  the  summit  of  the  craggy  fell,  which  makes  the  western 
boundary  of  the  dale  at  its  higher  end,  the  house  door  opened, 
and  a  young  girl,  shawled  and  holding  some  soft  burden  in  her 
arms,  appeared  on  the  threshold,  and  stood  there  for  a  moment, 
as  though  trying  the  quality  of  the  air  outside.  Her  pause  of 
inspection  seemed  to  satisfy  her,  for  she  moved  forward,  leaving 
the  door  open  behind  her,  and,  stepping  across  the  lawn,  settled 
herself  in  a  wicker  chair  under  an  apple-tree,  which  had  only 
just  shed  its  blossoms  on  the  turf  below.  She  had  hardly  done 
so  when  one  of  the  distant  doors  opening  on  the  gravel  path 
flew  open,  and  another  maiden,  a  slim  creature  garbed  in 
aesthetic  blue,  a  mass  of  reddish  brown  hair  flying  back  from 
her  face,  also  stepped  out  into  the  garden. 

'  Agnes  ! '  cried  the  new-comer,  who  had  the  strenuous  and 
dishevelled  air  natural  to  one  just  emerged  from  a  long  violin 
practice.  '  Has  Catherine  come  back  yet  ? ' 


6  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

'  Not  that  I  know  of.  Do  come  here  and  look  at  pussie  ;  did 
you  ever  see  anything  so  comfortable  1 ' 

1  You  and  she  look  about  equally  lazy.  What  have  you  been 
doing  all  the  afternoon  1 ' 

'  We  look  what  we  are,  my  dear.  Doing  ?  Why,  I  have  been 
attending  to  my  domestic  duties,  arranging  the  flowers,  mend- 
ing my  pink  dress  for  to-morrow  night,  and  helping  to  keep 
mamma  in  good  spirits  ;  she  is  depressed  because  she  has  been 
finding  Elizabeth  out  in  some  waste  or  other,  and  I  have  been 
preaching  to  her  to  make  Elizabeth  uncomfortable  if  she  likes, 
but  not  to  worrit  herself.  And  after  all,  pussie  and  I  have 
come  out  for  a  rest.  We've  earned  it,  haven't  we,  Chattie  1 
And,  as  for  you,  Miss  Artistic,  I  should  like  to  know  what  you've 
been  doing  for  the  good  of  your  kind  since  dinner.  I  suppose 
you  had  tea  at  the  vicarage  ? ' 

The  speaker  lifted  inquiring  eyes  to  her  sister  as  she  spoke, 
her  cheek  plunged  in  the  warm  fur  of  a  splendid  Persian  cat, 
her  whole  look  and  voice  expressing  the  very  highest  degree  of 
quiet,  comfort,  and  self-possession.  Agnes  Leyburn  was  not 
pretty';  the  lower  part  of  the  face  was  a  little  heavy  in  outline 
and  moulding ;  the  teeth  were  not  as  they  should  have  been, 
and  the  nose  was  unsatisfactory.  But  the  eyes  under  their  long 
lashes  were  shrewdness  itself,  and  there  was  an  individuality  in 
the  voice,  a  cheery  even-temperedness  in  look  and  tone,  which 
had  a  pleasing  effect  on  the  bystander.  Her  dress  was  neat  and 
dainty ;  every  detail  of  it  bespoke  a  young  woman  who  respected 
both  herself  and  the  fashion. 

Her  sister,  on  the  other  hand,  was  guiltless  of  the  smallest 
trace  of  fashion.  Her  skirts  were  cut  with  the  most  engaging 
naivete,  she  was  much  adorned  with  amber  beads,  and  her  red 
brown  hair  had  been  tortured  and  frizzled  to  look  as  much  like 
an  aureole  as  possible.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  she  was  a  beauty, 
though  at  present  you  felt  her  a  beauty  in  disguise,  a  stage 
Cinderella  as  it  were,  in  very  becoming  rags,  waiting  for  the 
godmother. 

'Yes,  I  had  tea  at  the  vicarage,'  said  this  young  person, 
throwing  herself  on  the  grass  in  spite  of  a  murmured  protest 
from  Agnes,  who  had  an  inherent  dislike  of  anything  physically 
rash,  'and  I  had  the  greatest  difficulty  to  get  away.  Mrs. 
Thornburgh  is  in  such  a  flutter  about  this  visit !  One  would 
think  it  was  the  Bishop  and  all  his  Canons,  and  promotion 
depending  on  it,  she  has  baked  so  many  cakes  and  put  out  so 
many  dinner  napkins  !  I  don't  envy  the  young  man.  She  will 
have  no  wits  left  at  all  to  entertain  him  with.  I  actually  wound 
up  by  adminstering  some  sal-volatile  to  her.' 

'  Well,  and  after  the  sal- volatile  did  you  get  anything  coherent 
out  of  her  on  the  subject  of  the  young  man  ? ' 

'  By  degrees,'  said  the  girl,  her  eyes  twinkling ;  '  if  one  can 
only  remember  the  thread  between  whiles  one  gets  at  the  facts 
somehow.  In  between  the  death  of  Mr.  Elsmere's  father  and 


CHAP,  i  WESTMORELAND  7 

his  going  to  college,  we  had,  let  me  see, — the  spare  room  cur- 
tains, the  making  of  them  and  the  cleaning  of  them,  Sarah's 
idiocy  in  sticking  to  her  black  sheep  of  a  young  man,  the  price 
of  tea  when  she  married,  Mr.  Thornburgh  s  singular  preference 
of  boiled  mutton  to  roast,  the  poems  she  had  written  to  her 
when  she  was  eighteen,  and  I  can't  tell  you  what  else  besides. 
But  I  held  fast,  and  every  now  and  then  I  brought  her  up  to 
the  point  again,  gently,  but  firmly,  and  now  I  think  I  know  all 
I  want  to  know  about  the  interesting  stranger.' 

'  My  ideas  about  him  are  not  many,'  said  Agnes,  rubbing  her 
cheek  gently  up  and  down  the  purring  cat,  '  and  there  doesn't 
seem  to  be  much  order  in  them.  He  is  very  accomplished — a 
teetotaller — he  has  been  to  the  Holy  Land,  and  his  hair  has 
been  cut  close  after  a  fever.  It  sounds  odd,  but  I  am  not 
curious.  I  can  very  well  wait  till  to-morrow  evening.' 

'  Oh,  well,  as  to  ideas  about  a  person,  one  doesn't  get  that 
sort  of  thing  from  Mrs.  Thornburgh.  But  I  know  how  old  he 
is,  where  he  went  to  college,  where  his  mother  lives,  a  certain 
number  of  his  mother's  peculiarities,  which  seem  to  be  Irish 
and  curious,  where  his  living  is,  how  much  it  is  worth,  likewise 
the  colour  of  his  eyes,  as  near  as  Mrs.  Thornburgh  can  get.' 

'  What  a  start  you  have  been  getting  ! '  said  Agnes  lazily. 
'  But  what  is  it  makes  the  poor  old  thing  so  excited  ? ' 

Rose  sat  up  and  began  to  fling  the  fir  cones  lying  about  her 
at  a  distant  mark  with  an  energy  worthy  of  her  physical  per- 
fections and  the  aesthetic  freedom  of  her  attire. 

'  Because,  my  dear,  Mrs.  Thornburgh  at  the  present  moment 
is  always  seeing  herself  as  the  conspirator  sitting  match  in 
hand  before  a  mine.  Mr.  Elsmere  is  the  match — we  are  the 
mine  !' 

Agnes  looked  at  her  sister,  and  they  both  laughed,  the  bright 
rippling  laugh  of  young  women  perfectly  aware  of  their  own 
value,  and  in  no  hurry  to  force  an  estimate  of  it  on  the  male 
world. 

'Well,'  said  Rose  deliberately,  her  delicate  cheek  flushed 
with  her  gymnastics,  her  eyes  sparkling,  'there  is  no  saying. 
"  Propinquity  does  it " — as  Mrs.  Thornburgh  is  always  remind- 
ing us. — But  where  can  Catherine  be  ?  She  went  out  directly 
after  lunch.' 

'  She  has  gone  out  to  see  that  youth  who  hurt  his  back  at  the 
Tysons — at  least  I  heard  her  talking  to  mamma  about  him,  and 
she  went  out  with  a  basket  that  looked  like  beef -tea.' 

Rose  frowned  a  little. 

'  And  I  suppose  I  ought  to  have  been  to  the  school  or  to  see 
Mrs.  Robson,  instead  of  fiddling  all  the  afternoon.  I  daresay  I 
ought — only,  unfortunately,  I  like  my  fiddle,  and  I  don't  like 
stuffy  cottages ;  and  as  for  the  goody  books,  I  read  them  so 
badly  that  the  old  women  themselves  come  down  upon  me.' 

'  I  seem  to  have  been  making  the  best  of  both  worlds,'  said 
Agnes  placidly.  '  I  haven't  been  doing  anything  I  don't  like, 


8  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

but  I  got  hold  of  that  dress  she  brought  home  to  make  for  little 
Emma  Payne  and  nearly  finished  the  skirt,  so  that  I  feel  as 
good  as  one  when  one  has  been  twice  to  church  on  a  wet  Sunday. 
Ah,  there  is  Catherine.  I  heard  the  gate.' 

As  she  spoke  steps  were  heard  approaching  through  the  clump 
of  trees  which  sheltered  the  little  entrance  gate,  and  as  Rose 
sprang  to  her  feet  a  tall  figure  in  white  and  gray  appeared 
against  the  background  of  the  sycamores,  and  came  quickly 
towards  the  sisters. 

'  Dears,  I  am  so  sorry ;  I  am  afraid  you  have  been  waiting 
for  me.  But  poor  Mrs.  Tyson  wanted  me  so  badly  that  I  could 
not  leave  her.  She  had  no  one  else  to  help  her  or  to  be  with 
her  till  that  eldest  girl  of  hers  came  home  from  work.' 

'It  doesn't  matter,'  said  Rose,  as  Catherine  put  her  arm 
round  her  shoulder ;  '  mamma  hasn't  been  fidgeting,  and  as  for 
Agnes,  she  looks  as  if  she  never  wanted  to  move  again.' 

Catherine's  clear  eyes,  which  at  the  moment  seemed  to  be 
full  of  inward  light,  kindled  in  them  by  some  foregoing  experi- 
ence, rested  kindly,  but  only  half  consciously,  on  her  younger 
sister,  as  Agnes  softly  nodded  and  smiled  to  her.  Evidently 
she  was  a  good  deal  older  than  the  other  two — she  looked  about 
six-and-twenty,  a  young  and  vigorous  woman  in  the  prime  of 
health  and  strength.  The  lines  of  the  form  were  rather  thin 
and  spare,  but  they  were  softened  by  the  loose  bodice  and  long 
full  skirt  of  her  dress,  and  by  the  folds  of  a  large  white  muslin 
handkerchief  which  was  crossed  over  her  breast.  The  face, 
sheltered  by  the  plain  shady  hat,  was  also  a  little  spoilt  from 
the  point  of  view  of  beauty  by  the  sharpness  of  the  lines  about 
the  chin  and  mouth,  and  by  a  slight  prominence  of  the  cheek- 
bones, but  the  eyes,  of  a  dark  bluish  gray,  were  fine,  the  nose 
delicately  cut,  the  brow  smooth  and  beautiful,  while  the  com- 
plexion had  caught  the  freshness  and  purity  of  Westmoreland 
air  and  Westmoreland  streams.  About  face  and  figure  there 
was  a  delicate  austere  charm,  something  which  harmonised  with 
the  bare  stretches  and  lonely  crags  of  the  fells,  something  which 
seemed  to  make  her  a  true  daughter  of  the  mountains,  partaker 
at  once  of  their  gentleness  and  their  severity.  She  was  in  her 
place  here,  beside  the  homely  Westmoreland  house  and  under 
the  shelter  of  the  fells.  When  you  first  saw  the  other  sisters 
you  wondered  what  strange  chance  had  brought  them  into  that 
remote  sparely -peopled  valley;  they  were  plainly  exiles,  and 
conscious  exiles,  from  the  movement  and  exhilarations  of  a 
fuller  social  life.  But  Catherine  impressed  you  as  only  a 
refined  variety  of  the  local  type ;  you  could  have  found  many 
like  her,  in  a  sense,  among  the  sweet-faced  serious  women  of  the 
neighbouring  farms. 

Now,  as  she  and  Rose  stood  together,  her  hand  still  resting 
lightly  on  the  other's  shoulder,  a  question  from  Agnes  banished 
the  faint  smile  on  her  lips,  and  left  only  the  look  of  inward 
illumination,  the  expression  of  one  who  had  just  passed,  as  it 


CHAP,  i  WESTMORELAND  9 

were,  through  a  strenuous  and  heroic  moment  of  life,  and  was 
still  living  in  the  exaltation  of  memory. 

'  So  the  poor  fellow  is  worse  ? ' 

'  Yes.  Doctor  Baker,  whom  they  have  got  to-day,  says  the 
spine  is  hopelessly  injured.  He  may  live  on  paralysed  for  a  few 
months  or  longer,  but  there  is  no  hope  of  cure.' 

Both  girls  uttered  a  shocked  exclamation.  '  That  fine  strong 
young  man  ! '  said  Rose  under  her  breath.  '  Does  he  know  ? ' 

'  Yes ;  when  I  got  there  the  doctor  had  just  gone,  and  Mrs. 
Tyson,  who  was  quite  unprepared  for  anything  so  dreadful, 
seemed  to  have  almost  lost  her  wits,  poor  thing  !  I  found  her 
in  the  front  kitchen  with  her  apron  over  her  head,  rocking  to 
and  fro,  and  poor  Arthur  in  the  inner  room — all  alone — waiting 
in  suspense.' 

'  And  who  told  him  ?    He  has  been  so  hopeful.' 

'I  did,'  said  Catherine  gently;  'they  made  me.  He  would 
know,  and  she  couldn't — she  ran  out  of  the  room.  I  never  saw 
anything  so  pitiful.' 

'  Oh,  Catherine ! '  exclaimed  Rose's  moved  voice,  while 
Agnes  got  up,  and  Chattie  jumped  softly  down  from  her  lap, 
unheeded. 

'  How  did  he  bear  it  1 ' 

'  Don't  ask  me,'  said  Catherine,  while  the  quiet  tears  filled  her 
eyes  and  her  voice  broke,  as  the  hidden  feeling  would  have  its  way. 
'  It  was  terrible !  I  don't  know  how  we  got  through  that  half -hour 
— his  mother  and  I.  It  was  like  wrestling  with  some  one  in 
agony.  At  last  he  was  exhausted — he  let  me  say  the  Lord's 
Prayer;  I  think  it  soothed  him,  but  one  couldn't  tell.  He 
seemed  half  asleep  when  I  left.  Oh ! '  she  cried,  laying  her 
hand  in  a  close  grasp  on  Rose's  arm,  'if  you  had  seen  his 
eyes,  and  his  poor  hands — there  was  such  despair  in  them  ! 
They  say,  though  he  was  so  young,  he  was  thinking  of  getting 
married  ;  and  he  was  so  steady,  such  a  good  son  ! ' 

A  silence  fell  upon  the  three.  Catherine  stood  looking  out 
across  the  valley  towards  the  sunset.  Now  that  the  demand 
upon  her  for  calmness  and  fortitude  was  removed,  and  that  the 
religious  exaltation  in  which  she  had  gone  through  the  last 
three  hours  was  becoming  less  intense,  the  pure  human  pity  of 
the  scene  she  had  just  witnessed  seemed  to  be  gaining  upon  her. 
Her  lip  trembled,  and  two  or  three  tears  silently  overflowed. 
Rose  turned  and  gently  kissed  her  cheek,  and  Agnes  touched 
her  hand  caressingly,  she  smiled  at  them,  for  it  was  not  in  her 
nature  to  let  any  sign  of  love  pass  unheeded,  and  in  a  few  more 
seconds  she  had  mastered  herself. 

'  Dears,  we  must  go  in.  Is  mother  in  her  room  ?  Oh,  Rose  ! 
in  that  thin  dress  on  the  grass ;  I  oughtn't  to  have  kept  you 
out.  It  is  quite  cold  by  now.' 

And  she  hurried  them  in,  leaving  them  to  superintend  the 
preparations  for  supper  downstairs  while  she  ran  up  to  her 
mother. 


10  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

A  quarter  of  an  hour  afterwards  they  were  all  gathered 
round  the  supper-table,  the  windows  open  to  the  garden  and 
the  May  twilight.  At  Catherine's  right  ha.nd  sat  Mrs.  Leyburn, 
a  tall  delicate-looking  woman,  wrapped  in  a  white  shawl,  about 
whom  there  were  only  three  things  to  be  noticed — an  amiable 
temper,  a  sufficient  amount  of  weak  health  to  excuse  her  all  the 
more  tiresome  duties  of  life,  and  an  incorrigible  tendency  to 
sing  the  praises  of  her  daughters  at  all  times  and  to  all  people. 
The  daughters  winced  under  it :  Catherine,  because  it  was  a 
positive  pain  to  her  to  hear  herself  brought  forward  and  talked 
about ;  the  others,  because  youth  infinitely  prefers  to  make  its 
own  points  in  its  own  way.  Nothing,  however,  could  mend  this 
defect  of  Mrs.  Leyburn's.  Catherine's  strength  of  will  could 
keep  it  in  check  sometimes,  but  in  general  it  had  to  be  borne 
with.  A  sharp  word  would  have  silenced  the  mother's  well- 
meant  chatter  at  any  time — for  she  was  a  fragile,  nervous  woman, 
entirely  dependent  on  her  surroundings — but  none  of  them 
were  capable  of  it,  and  their  mere  refractoriness  counted  for 
nothing. 

The  dining-room  in  which  they  were  gathered  had  a  good 
deal  of  homely  dignity,  and  was  to  the  Leyburns  full  of  associa- 
tions. The  oak  settle  near  the  fire,  the  oak  sideboard  running 
along  one  side  of  the  room,  the  black  oak  table  with  carved 
legs  at  which  they  sat,  were  genuine  pieces  of  old  Westmoreland 
work,  which  had  belonged  to  their  grandfather.  The  heavy 
carpet  covering  the  stone  floor  of  what  twenty  years  before  had 
been  the  kitchen  of  the  farmhouse  was  a  survival  from  a  south- 
country  home,  which  had  sheltered  their  lives  for  eight  happy 
years.  Over  the  mantelpiece  hung  the  portrait  of  the  girls' 
father,  a  long  serious  face,  not  unlike  Wordsworth's  face  in  out- 
line, and  bearing  a  strong  resemblance  to  Catherine  ;  a  line  of 
silhouettes  adorned  the  mantelpiece ;  on  the  walls  were  prints 
of  Winchester  and  Worcester  Cathedrals,  photographs  of  Greece, 
and  two  old-fashioned  engravings  of  Dante  and  Milton  ;  while 
a  bookcase,  filled  apparently  with  the  father's  college  books 
and  college  prizes  and  the  favourite  authors — mostly  poets, 
philosophers,  and  theologians — of  his  later  years,  gave  a  final 
touch  of  habitableness  to  the  room.  The  little  meal  and  its 
appointments — the  eggs,  the  home-made  bread  and  preserves, 
the  tempting  butter  and  old-fashioned  silver  gleaming  among 
the  flowers  which  Rose  arranged  with  fanciful  skill  in  Japanese 
pots  of  her  own  providing — suggested  the  same  family  qualities 
as  the  room.  Frugality,  a  dainty  personal  self-respect,  a  family 
consciousness,  tenacious  of  its  memories  and  tenderly  careful  of 
all  the  little  material  objects  which  were  to  it  the  symbols  of 
those  memories — clearly  all  these  elements  entered  into  the 
Leyburn  tradition. 

And  of  this  tradition,  with  its  implied  assertions  and  denials, 
clearly  Catherine  Leyburn,  the  elder  sister,  was,  of  all  the 
persons  gathered  in  this  little  room,  the  most  pronounced 


CHAP,  i  WESTMORELAND  11 

embodiment.  She  sat  at  the  head  of  the  table,  the  little  basket 
of  her  own  and  her  mother's  keys  beside  her.  Her  dress  was  a 
soft  black  brocade,  with  lace  collar  and  cuff,  which  had  once 
belonged  to  an  aunt  of  her  mother's.  It  was  too  old  for  her 
both  in  fashion  and  material,  but  it  gave  her  a  gentle,  almost 
matronly  dignity,  which  became  her.  Her  long  than  hands,  full 
of  character  and  delicacy,  moved  nimbly  among  the  cups ;  all 
her  ways  were  quiet  and  yet  decided.  It  was  evident  that 
among  this  little  party  she,  and  not  the  plaintive  mother,  was 
really  in  authority.  To-night,  however,  her  looks  were  specially 
soft.  The  scene  she  had  gone  through  in  the  afternoon  had  left 
her  pale,  with  traces  of  patient  fatigue  round  the  eyes  and 
mouth,  but  all  her  emotion  was  gone,  and  she  was  devoting 
herself  to  the  others,  responding  with  quick  interest  and  ready 
smiles  to  all  they  had  to  say,  and  contributing  the  little  experi- 
ences of  her  own  day  in  return. 

Rose  sat  on  her  left  hand  in  yet  another  gown  of  strange  tint 
and  archaic  outline.  Rose's  gowns  were  legion.  They  were 
manufactured  by  a  farmer's  daughter  across  the  valley,  under 
her  strict  and  precise  supervision.  She  was  accustomed,  as  she 
boldly  avowed,  to  shut  herself  up  at  the  beginning  of  each  season 
of  the  year  for  two  days'  meditation  on  the  subject.  And  now, 
thanks  to  the  spring  warmth,  she  was  entering  at  last  with 
infinite  zest  on  the  results  of  her  April  vigils. 

Catherine  had  surveyed  her  as  she  entered  the  room  with  a 
smile,  but  a  smile  not  altogether  to  Rose's  taste. 

'  What,  another,  Roschen  ? '  she  had  said,  with  the  slightest 
lifting  of  the  eyebrows.  '  You  never  confided  that  to  me.  Did 
you  think  I  was  unworthy  of  anything  so  artistic  ? ' 

'Not  at  all,'  said  Rose  calmly,  seating  herself.  'I  thought 
you  were  better  employed.' 

But  a  flush  flew  over  her  transparent  cheek,  and  she  presently 
threw  an  irritated  look  at  Agnes,  who  had  been  looking  from 
her  to  Catherine  with  amused  eyes. 

'I  met  Mr.  Thornburgh  and  Mr.  Elsmere  driving  from  the 
station,'  Catherine  announced  presently ;  '  at  least  there  was  a 
gentleman  in  a  clerical  wideawake,  with  a  portmanteau  behind, 
so  I  imagine  it  must  have  been  he.' 

'  Did  he  look  promising  ? '  inquired  Agnes. 

'  I  don't  think  I  noticed,'  said  Catherine  simply,  but  with  a 
momentary  change  of  expression.  The  sisters,  remembering 
how  she  had  come  in  upon  them  with  that  look  of  one  '  lifted 
up,'  understood  why  she  had  not  noticed,  and  refrained  from 
further  questions. 

'  Well,  it  is  to  be  hoped  the  young  man  is  recovered  enough 
to  stand  Long  Whindale  festivities,'  said  Rose.  'Mrs.  Thorn- 
burgh  means  to  let  them  loose  on  his  devoted  head  to-morrow 
night.' 

'  Who  are  coming  ? '  asked  Mrs.  Leyburn  eagerly.  The  occa- 
sional tea  parties  of  the  neighbourhood  were  an  unfailing  excite- 


12  EGBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

ment  to  her,  simply  because,  by  dint  of  the  small  adornings, 
natural  to  the  occasion,  they  showed  her  daughters  to  her  under 
slightly  new  aspects.  To  see  Catherine,  who  never  took  any 
thought  for  her  appearance,  forced  to  submit  to  a  white  dress,  a 
line  of  pearls  round  the  shapely  throat,  a  flower  in  the  brown 
hair,  put  there  by  Rose's  imperious  fingers ;  to  sit  in  a  corner 
well  out  of  draughts,  watching  the  effect  of  Rose's  half -fledged 
beauty,  and  drinking  in  the  compliments  of  the  neighbourhood 
on  Rose's  playing  or  Agnes's  conversation,  or  Catherine's  prac- 
tical ability — these  were  Mrs.  Leyburn's  passions,  and  a  tea 
party  always  gratified  them  to  the  full. 

'  Mamma  asks  as  if  really  she  wanted  an  answer,'  remarked 
Agnes  drily.  '  Dear  mother,  can't  you  by  now  make  up  a  tea 
party  at  the  Thornburghs  out  of  your  head  1 ' 

'  The  Seatons  ? '  inquired  Mrs.  Leyburn. 

' Mrs.  Seaton  and  Miss  Barks,'  replied  Rose.  'The  rector 
won't  come.  And  I  needn't  say  that,  having  moved  heaven  and 
earth  to  get  Mrs.  Seaton,  Mrs.  Thornburgh  is  now  miserable 
because  she  has  got  her.  Her  ambition  is  gratified,  but  she 
knows  that  she  has  spoilt  the  party.  Well,  then,  Mr.  Mayhew, 
of  course,  his  son,  and  his  flute.' 

'  You  to  play  his  accompaniments  ? '  put  in  Agnes  slily.  Rose's 
lip  curled. 

'  Not  if  Miss  Barks  knows  it,'  she  said  emphatically,  '  nor  if  I 
know  it.  The  Bakers,  of  course,  ourselves,  and  the  unknown.' 

'  Dr.  Baker  is  always  pleasant,'  said  Mrs.  Leyburn,  leaning 
back  and  drawing  her  white  shawl  languidly  round  her.  '  He 
told  me  the  other  day,  Catherine,  that  if  it  weren't  for  you  he 
should  have  to  retire.  He  regards  you  as  his  junior  partner. 
"Marvellous  nursing  gift  your  eldest  daughter  has,  Mrs.  Ley- 
burn,"  he  said  to  me  the  other  day.  A  most  agreeable  man.' 

'  I  wonder  if  I  shall  be  able  to  get  any  candid  opinions  out  of 
Mr.  Elsmere  the  day  after  to-morrow  ? '  said  Rose,  musing.  '  It 
is  difficult  to  avoid  having  an  opinion  of  some  sort  about  Mrs. 
Seaton.' 

'  Oxford  dons  don't  gossip  and  are  never  candid,'  remarked 
Agnes  severely. 

'  Then  Oxford  dons  must  be  very  dull,'  cried  Rose.  '  How- 
ever,' and  her  countenance  brightened,  'if  he  stays  here  four 
weeks  we  can  teach  him.' 

Catherine,  meanwhile,  sat  watching  the  two  girls  with  a  soft 
elder  sister's  indulgence.  Was  it  in  connection  with  their  bright 
attractive  looks  that  the  thought  flitted  through  her  head,  'I 
wonder  what  the  young  man  will  be  like  1 ' 

'  Oh,  by  the  way,'  said  Rose  presently, '  I  had  nearly  forgotten 
Mrs.  Thornburgh's  two  messages.  I  informed  her,  Agnes,  that 
you  had  given  up  water-colour  and  meant  to  try  oils,  and  she 
told  me  to  implore  you  not  to,  because  "  water-colour  is  so  much 
more  lady-like  than  oils."  And  as  for  you,  Catherine,  she  sent 
you  a  most  special  message.  I  was  to  tell  you  that  she  just 


CHAP,  i  WESTMORELAND  13 

loved  the  way  you  had  taken  to  plaiting  your  hair  lately — that 
it  was  exactly  like  the  picture  of  Jeanie  Deans  she  has  in  the 
drawing-room,  and  that  she  would  never  forgive  you  if  you 
didn't  plait  it  so  to-morrow  night.' 

Catherine  flushed  faintly  as  she  got  up  from  the  table. 

'  Mrs.  Thornburgh  has  eagle-eyes,'  she  said,  moving  away  to 
give  her  arm  to  her  mother,  who  looked  fondly  at  her,  making 
some  remark  in  praise  of  Mrs.  Thornburgh's  taste. 

'  Rose  ! '  cried  Agnes  indignantly,  when  the  other  two  had  dis- 
appeared, 'you  and  Mrs.  Thornburgh  have  not  the  sense  you 
were  born  with.  What  on  earth  did  you  say  that  to  Catherine 
for?' 

Rose  stared ;  then  her  face  fell  a  little. 

'  I  suppose  it  was  foolish,'  she  admitted.  Then  she  leant  her 
head  on  one  hand  and  drew  meditative  patterns  on  the  table- 
cloth with  the  other.  '  You  know,  Agnes,'  she  said  presently, 
looking  up,  '  there  are  drawbacks  to  having  a  St.  Elizabeth  for 
a  sister.' 

Agnes  discreetly  made  no  reply,  and  Rose  was  left  alone.  She 
sat  dreaming  a  few  minutes,  the  corners  of  the  red  mouth  droop- 
ing. Then  she  sprang  up  with  a  long  sigh.  '  A  little  life  ! '  she 
said  half -aloud,  'a  little  wickedness/'  and  she  shook  her  curly 
head  defiantly. 

A  few  minutes  later,  in  the  little  drawing-room  on  the  other 
side  of  the  hall,  Catherine  and  Rose  stood  together  by  the  open 
window.  For  the  first  time  in  a  lingering  spring,  the  air  was 
soft  and  balmy ;  a  tender  grayness  lay  over  the  valley  :  it  was 
not  night,  though  above  the  clear  outlines  of  the  fell  the  stars 
were  just  twinkling  in  the  pale  blue.  Far  away  under  the  crag 
on  the  farther  side  of  High  Fell  a  light  was  shining.  As 
Catherine's  eyes  caught  it  there  was  a  quick  response  in  the 
fine  Madonna-like  face. 

'  Any  news  for  me  from  the  Backhouses  this  afternoon  ? '  she 
asked  Rose. 

'  No,  I  heard  of  none.    How  is  she  ? ' 

'  Dying,'  said  Catherine  simply,  and  stood  a  moment  looking 
out.  Rose  did  not  interrupt  her.  She  knew  that  the  house 
from  which  the  light  was  shining  sheltered  a  tragedy ;  she 
guessed  with  the  vagueness  of  nineteen  that  it  was  a  tragedy  of 
passion  and  sin  •  but  Catherine  had  not  been  communicative  on 
the  subject,  ana  Rose  had  for  some  time  past  set  up  a  dumb 
resistance  to  her  sister's  most  characteristic  ways  of  life  and 
thought,  which  prevented  her  now  from  asking  questions.  She 
wished  nervously  to  give  Catherine's  extraordinary  moral 
strength  no  greater  advantage  over  her  than  she  could  help. 

Presently,  however,  Catherine  threw  her  arm  round  her  with 
a  tender  prptectingness. 

'  What  did  you  do  with  yourself  all  the  afternoon,  Roschen  ? ' 

'I  practised  for  two  hours,'  said  the  girl  shortly,  'and  two 
hours  this  morning.  My  Spohr  is  nearly  perfect.' 


14  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

'  And  you  didn't  look  into  the  school  ? '  asked  Catherine,  hesi- 
tating ;  '  I  know  Miss  Merry  expected  you.' 

'  No,  I  didn't.  When  one  can  play  the  violin  and  can't  teach, 
any  more  than  a  cockatoo,  what's  the  good  of  wasting  one's  time 
in  teaching  ? ' 

Catherine  did  not  reply.  A  minute  after  Mrs.  Leyburn  called 
her,  and  she  went  to  sit  on  a  stool  at  her  mother's  feet,  her  hands 
resting  on  the  elder  woman's  lap,  the  whole  attitude  of  the  tall 
active  figure  one  of  beautiful  and  childlike  abandonment.  Mrs. 
Leyburn  wanted  to  confide  in  her  about  a  new  cap,  and  Cath- 
erine took  up  the  subject  with  a  zest  which  kept  her  mother 
happy  till  bedtime. 

Why  couldn't  she  take  as  much  interest  in  my  SpohrT 
thought  Rose. 

Late  that  night,  long  after  she  had  performed  all  a  maid's 
offices  for  her  mother,  Catherine  Leyburn  was  busy  in  her  own 
room  arranging  a  large  cupboard  containing  medicines  and  ordi- 
nary medical  necessaries,  a  storehouse  whence  all  the  simpler 
emergencies  of  their  end  of  the  valley  were  supplied.  She  had 
put  on  a  white  flannel  dressing-gown  and  moved  noiselessly 
about  in  it,  the  very  embodiment  of  order,  of  purity,  of  quiet 
energy.  The  little  white-curtained  room  was  bareness  and  neat- 
ness itself.  There  were  a  few  book-shelves  along  the  walls, 
holding  the  books  which  her  father  had  given  her.  Over  the 
bed  were  two  enlarged  portraits  of  her  parents,  and  a  line  of 
queer  little  faded  monstrosities,  representing  Rose  and  Agnes 
in  different  stages  of  childhood.  On  the  table  beside  the  bed 
was  a  pile  of  well-worn  books — Keble,  Jeremy  Taylor,  the  Bible 
— connected  in  the  mind  of  the  mistress  of  the  room  with  the 
intensest  moments  of  the  spiritual  life.  There  was  a  strip  of 
carpet  by  the  bed,  a  plain  chair  or  two,  a  large  press  ;  otherwise 
no  furniture  that  was  not  absolutely  necessary,  and  no  orna- 
ments. And  yet,  for  all  its  emptiness,  the  little  room  in  its 
order  and  spotlessness  had  the  look  and  spell  of  a  sanctuary. 

When  her  task  was  finished  Catherine  came  forward  to  the 
infinitesimal  dressing-table,  and  stood  a  moment  before  the 
common  cottage  looking-glass  upon  it.  The  candle  behind  her 
showed  her  the  outlines  of  her  head  and  face  in  shadow  against 
the  white  ceiling.  Her  soft  brown  hair  was  plaited  high  above 
the  broad  white  brow,  giving  to  it  an  added  stateliness,  while  it 
left  unmasked  the  pure  lines  of  the  neck.  Mrs.  Thornburgh  and 
her  mother  were  quite  right.  Simple  as  the  new  arrangement 
was,  it  could  hardly  have  been  more  effective. 

But  the  looking-glass  got  no  smile  in  return  for  its  informa- 
tion. Catherine  Leyburn  was  young ;  she  was  alone ;  she  was 
being  very  plainly  told  that,  taken  as  a  whole,  she  was,  or  might 
be  at  any  moment,  a  beautiful  woman.  And  all  her  answer  was 
a  frown  and  a  quick  movement  away  from  the  glass.  Putting 
up  her  hands  she  began  to  undo  the  plaits  with  haste,  almost 
with  impatience ;  she  smoothed  the  whole  mass  then  set  free 


CHAP,  ii  WESTMORELAND  15 

into  tlie  severest  order,  plaited  it  closely  together,  and  then, 
putting  out  her  light,  threw  herself  on  her  knees  beside  the 
window,  which  was  partly  open  to  the  starlight  and  the  moun- 
tains. The  voice  of  the  river  far  away,  wafted  from  the  mist- 
covered  depths  of  the  valley,  and  the  faint  rustling  of  the  trees 
just  outside,  were  for  long  after  the  only  sounds  which  broke 
the  silence. 

When  Catherine  appeared  at  breakfast  next  morning  her 
hair  was  plainly  gathered  into  a  close  knot  behind,  which  had 
been  her  way  of  dressing  it  since  she  was  thirteen.  Agnes  threw 
a  quick  look  at  Rose  ;  Mrs.  Leyburn,  as  soon  as  she  had  made 
out  through  her  spectacles  what  was  the  matter,  broke  into 
warm  expostulations. 

'It  is  more  comfortable,  dear  mother,  and  takes  much  less 
time,'  said  Catherine,  reddening. 

'  Poor  Mrs.  Thornburgh  ! '  remarked  Agnes  drily. 

'  Oh,  Rose  will  make  up ! '  said  Catherine,  glancing,  not 
without  a  spark  of  mischief  in  her  gray  eyes,  at  Rose's  tortured 
locks ;  '  and  mamma's  new  cap,  which  will  be  superb ! ' 


CHAPTER  H 

ABOUT  four  o'clock  on  the  afternoon  of  the  day  which  was  to  be 
marked  in  the  annals  of  Long  Whindale  as  that  of  Mrs.  Thorn- 
burgh's  '  high  tea,'  that  lady  was  seated  in  the  vicarage  garden, 
her  spectacles  on  her  nose,  a  large  couvre-pied  over  her  knees, 
and  the  Whinborough  newspaper  on  her  lap.  The  neighbour- 
hood of  this  last  enabled  her  to  make  an  intermittent  pretence 
of  reading ;  but  in  reality  the  energies  of  her  housewifely  mind 
were  taken  up  with  quite  other  things.  The  vicar's  wife  was 
plunged  in  a  housekeeping  experiment  of  absorbing  interest. 
All  her  solid  preparations  for  the  evening  were  over,  and  in  her 
own  mind  she  decided  that  with  them  there  was  no  possible 
fault  to  be  found.  The  cook,  Sarah,  had  gone  about  her  work 
in  a  spirit  at  once  lavish  and  fastidious,  breathed  into  her  by 
her  mistress.  No  better  tongue,  no  plumper  chickens,  than 
those  which  would  grace  her  board  to-night  were  to  be  found, 
so  Mrs.  Thornburgh  was  persuaded,  in  the  district.  And  so 
with  everything  else  of  a  substantial  kind.  On  this  head  the 
hostess  felt  no  anxieties. 

But  a  '  tea '  in  the  north  country  depends  for  distinction,  not 
on  its  solids  or  its  savouries,  but  on  its  sweets.  A  rural  hostess 
earns  her  reputation,  not  by  a  discriminating  eye  for  butcher's- 
meat,  but  by  her  inventiveness  in  cakes  and  custards.  And  it 
was  just  here,  with  regard  to  this  'bubble  reputation^  that  the 
vicar's  wife  01  Long  Whindale  was  particularly  sensitive.  Was 
she  not  expecting  Mrs.  Seaton,  the  wife  of  the  Rector  of  Whin- 
borough — odious  woman — to  tea  ?  Was  it  not  incumbent  on  her 


16  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

to  do  well,  nay,  to  do  brilliantly,  in  the  eyes  of  this  local 
magnate?  And  how  was  it  possible  to  do  brilliantly  in  this 
matter  with  a  cook  whose  recipes  were  hopelessly  old-fashioned, 
and  who  had  an  exasperating  belief  in  the  sufficiency  of  buttered 
'  whigs '  and  home-made  marmalade  for  all  requirements  ? 

Stung  by  these  thoughts,  Mrs.  Thornburgh  had  gone  prowling 
about  the  neighbouring  town  of  Whinborough  till  the  shop 
window  of  a  certain  newly  -  arrived  confectioner  had  been 
revealed  to  her,  stored  with  the  most  airy  and  appetising  trifles 
— of  a  make  and  colouring  quite  metropolitan.  She  had 
flattened  her  gray  curls  against  the  window  for  one  deliberative 
moment ;  had  then  rushed  in  ;  and  as  soon  as  the  carrier's  cart 
of  Long  Whindale,  which  she  was  now  anxiously  awaiting, 
should  have  arrived,  bearing  with  it  the  produce  of  that 
adventure,  Mrs.  Thornburgh  would  be  a  proud  woman,  prepared 
to  meet  a  legion  of  rectors'  wives  without  flinching.  Not, 
indeed,  in  all  respects  a  woman  at  peace  with  herself  and  the 
world.  In  the  country,  where  every  household  should  be  self- 
contained,  a  certain  discredit  attaches  in  every  well-regulated 
mind  to  '  getting  things  in.'  Mrs.  Thornburgh  was  also  nervous 
at  the  thought  of  the  bill.  It  would  have  to  be  met  gradually 
out  of  the  weekly  money.  For  '  William '  was  to  know  nothing 
of  the  matter,  except  so  far  as  a  few  magnificent  generalities 
and  the  testimony  of  his  own  dazzled  eyes  might  inform  him. 
But  after  all.  in  this  as  in  everything  else,  one  must  suffer  to  be 
distinguished. 

The  carrier,  however,  lingered.  And  at  last  the  drowsiness 
of  the  afternoon  overcame  even  those  pleasing  expectations  we 
have  described,  and  Mrs.  Thornburgh's  newspaper  dropped 
unheeded  to  her  feet.  The  vicarage,  under  the  shade  of  which 
she  was  sitting,  was  a  new  gray  stone  building  with  wooden 
gables,  occupying  the  site  of  what  had  once  been  the  earlier 
vicarage  house  of  Long  Whindale,  the  primitive  dwelling-house 
of  an  incumbent,  whose  chapelry,  after  sundry  augmentations, 
amounted  to  just  twenty-seven  pounds  a  year.  The  modern 
house,  though  it  only  contained  sufficient  accommodation  for  Mi-. 
and  Mrs.  Thornburgh,  one  guest,  and  two  maids,  would  have 
seemed  palatial  to  those  rustic  clerics  of  the  past  from  whose 
ministrations  the  lonely  valley  had  drawn  its  spiritual  susten- 
ance in  times  gone  by.  They,  indeed,  had  belonged  to  another 
race — a  race  sprung  from  the  soil  and  content  to  spend  the 
whole  of  life  in  very  close  contact  and  very  homely  intercourse 
with  their  mother  earth.  Mr.  Thornburgh,  who  had  come  to 
the  valley  only  a  few  years  before  from  a  parish  in  one  of  the 
large  manufacturing  towns,  and  who  had  no  inherited  interest 
in  the  Cumbrian  folk  and  their  ways,  had  only  a  very  faint  idea, 
and  that  a  distinctly  depreciatory  one,  of  what  these  mythical 
predecessors  of  his,  with  their  strange  social  status  and 
unbecoming  occupations,  might  be  like.  But  there  were  one  or 
t\vo  old  men  still  lingering  in  the  dale  who  could  have  told  him 


CHAP,  ii  WESTMORELAND  17 

a  great  deal  about  them,  whose  memory  went  back  to  the  days 
when  the  relative  social  importance  of  the  dale  parsons  was 
exactly  expressed  by  the  characteristic  Westmoreland  saying : 
'  Ef  ye'll  nobbut  send  us  a  gude  schulemeaster,  a  verra'  moderate 
parson  'ull  dea ! '  and  whose  slow  minds,  therefore,  were  filled 
with  a  strong  inarticulate  sense  of  difference  as  they  saw  him 
pass  along  the  road,  and  recalled  the  incumbent  of  their  child- 
hood, dropping  in  for  his  '  crack '  and  his  glass  of  '  yale '  at  this 
or  that  farmhouse  on  any  occasion  of  local  festivity,  or  driving 
his  sheep  to  Whinborough  market  with  his  own  hands  like  any 
other  peasant  of  the  dale. 

Within  the  last  twenty  years,  however,  the  few  remaining 
survivors  of  this  primitive  clerical  order  in  the  Westmoreland 
and  Cumberland  valleys  have  dropped  into  their  quiet  unre- 
membered  graves,  and  new  men  of  other  ways  a^nd  other  modes 
of  speech  reign  in  their  stead.  And  as  at  Long  Whindale,  so 
almost  everywhere,  the  change  has  been  emphasised  by  the 
disappearance  of  the  old  parsonage  houses  with  their  stone 
floors,  their  parlours  lustrous  with  oak  carving  on  chest  or 
dresser,  and  their  encircling  farm-buildings  and  meadows,  in 
favour  of  an  upgrowth  of  new  trim  mansions  designed  to  meet 
the  needs,  not  of  peasants,  but  of  gentlefolks. 

And  naturally  the  churches  top  have  shared  in  the  process  of 
transformation.  The  ecclesiastical  revival  of  the  last  half- 
century  has  worked  its  will  even  in  the  remotest  corners  of  the 
Cumbrian  country,  and  soon  not  a  vestige  of  the  homely 
worshipping -places  of  an  earlier  day  will  remain.  Across  the 
road,  in  front  of  the  Long  Whindale  parsonage,  for  instance, 
rose  a  freshly  built  church,  also  peaked  and  gabled,  with  a  spire 
and  two  bells,  and  a  painted  east  window,  and  Heaven  knows 
what  novelties  besides.  The  primitive  whitewashed  structure 
it  replaced  had  lasted  long,  and  in  the  course  of  many  genera- 
tions time  had  clothed  its  moss-grown  walls,  its  slated  porch, 
and  tombstones  worn  with  rain  in  a  certain  beauty  of  congruity 
and  association,  linking  it  with  the  purple  distances  of  the  fells, 
and  the  brawling  river  bending  round  the  gray  enclosure.  But 
finally,  after  a  period  of  quiet  and  gradual  decay,  the  ruin  of 
Long  Whindale  chapel  had  become  a  quick  and  hurrying  ruin 
that  would  not  be  arrested.  When  the  rotten  timbers  of  the 
roof  came  dropping  on  the  farmers'  heads,  and  the  oak  benches 
beneath  offered  gaps,  the  geography  of  which  had  to  be  carefully 
learnt  by  the  substantial  persons  who  sat  on  them,  lest  they 
should  be  overtaken  by  undignified  disaster;  when  the  rain 
poured  in  on  the  Communion  Table  and  the  wind  raged  through 
innumerable  mortarless  chinks,  even  the  slowly-moving  folk  of 
the  valley  came  to  the  conclusion  that  '  summat  'ull  hev  to  be 
deun.'  And  by  the  help  of  the  Bishop,  and  Queen  Anne's 
Bounty,  and  what  not,  aided  by  just  as  many  half-crowns  as  the 
valley  found  itself  unable  to  defend  against  the  encroachments 
of  a  new  and  '  moiderin '  parson,  '  summat '  was  done,  whereof 

c 


18  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

the  results — namely,  the  new  church,  vicarage,  and  schoolhouse 
— were  now  conspicuous. 

This  radical  change,  however,  had  not  been  the  work  of  Mr. 
Thornburgh  but  of  his  predecessor,  a  much  more  pushing  and 
enterprising  man,  whose  successful  efforts  to  improve  the  church 
accommodation  in  Long  Whindale  had  moved  such  deep  and 
lasting  astonishment  in  the  mind  of  a  somewhat  lethargic- 
bishop,  that  promotion  had  been  readily  found  for  him.  Mr. 
Thornburgh  was  neither  capable  of  the  sturdy  begging  which 
had  raised  the  church,  nor  was  he  likely  on  other  lines  to  reach 
preferment.  He  and  his  wife,  who  possessed  much  more  salience 
of  character  than  he,  were  accepted  in  the  dale  as  belonging  to 
the  established  order  of  things.  Nobody  wished  them  any  harm, 
and  the  few  people  they  had  specially  befriended,  naturally, 
thought  well  of  them. 

But  the  old  intimacy  of  relation  which  had  once  subsisted 
between  the  clergyman  of  Long  Whindale  and  his  parishioners 
was  wholly  gone.  They  had  sunk  in  the  scale ;  the  parson  had 
risen.  The  old  statesmen  or  peasant  proprietors  of  the  valley 
had  for  the  most  part  succumbed  to  various  destructive  influ- 
ences, some  social,  some  economical,  added  to  a  certain  amount 
of  corrosion  from  within ;  and  their  place  had  been  taken  by 
leaseholders,  less  drunken  perhaps,  and  better  educated,  but 
also  far  less  shrewd  and  individual,  and  lacking  in  the  rude 
dignity  of  their  predecessors. 

And  as  the  land  had  lost,  the  church  had  gained.  The  place 
of  the  dalesmen  knew  them  no  more,  but  the  church  and  parson- 
age had  got  themselves  rebuilt,  the  parson  had  had  his  income 
raised,  had  let  off  his  glebe  to  a  neighbouring  farmer,  kept  two 
maids,  and  drank  claret  when  he  drank  anything.  His  flock 
were  friendly  enough,  and  paid  their  commuted  tithes  without 
grumbling.  But  between  them  and  a  perfectly  well-meaning 
but  rather  dull  man,  who  stood  on  his  dignity  and  wore  a  black 
coat  all  the  week,  there  was  no  real  community.  Rejoice  in  it 
as  we  may,  in  this  final  passage  of  Parson  Primrose  to  social 
regions  beyond  the  ken  of  Farmer  Flamborough,  there  are  some 
elements  of  loss  as  there  are  in  all  changes. 

Wheels  on  the  road  !  Mrs.  Thornburgh  woke  up  with  a  start, 
and  stumbling  over  newspaper  and  couvre-pied,  hurried  across 
the  lawn  as  fast  as  her  short  squat  figure  would  allow,  gray 
curls  and  cap-strings  flying  behind  her.  She  heard  a  colloquy 
in  the  distance  in  broad  Westmoreland  dialect,  and  as  she  turned 
the  corner  of  the  house  she  nearly  ran  into  her  tall  cook,  Sarah, 
whose  impassive  and  saturnine  countenance  bore  traces  of  un- 
usual excitement. 

'Missis,  there's  naw  cakes.  They're  all  left  behind  on  t' 
counter  at  Randall's.  Mr.  Backhouse  says  as  how  he  told  old 
Jim  to  go  fur  'em,  and  he  niver  went,  and  Mr.  Backhouse  he 
niver  found  oot  till  he'd  got  past  t'  bridge,  and  than  it  wur  too 
late  to  0:0  back.' 


CHAP,  ii  WESTMORELAND  19 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  stood  transfixed,  something  of  her  fresh 
pink  colour  slowly  deserting  her  face  as  she  realised  the  enormity 
of  the  catastrophe.  And  was  it  possible  that  there  was  the 
faintest  twinkle  of  grim  satisfaction  on  the  face  of  that  elderly 
minx,  Sarah? 

Mrs.  Thornburgh,  however,  did  not  stay  to  explore  the 
recesses  of  Sarah's  mind,  but  ran  with  little  pattering,  undig- 
nified steps  across  the  front  garden  and  down  the  steps  to 
where  Mr.  Backhouse  the  carrier  stood,  bracing  himself  for  self- 
defence. 

'Ya  may  weel  fret,  mum,'  said  Mr.  Backhouse,  interrupting 
the  flood  of  her  reproaches,  with  the  comparative  sang-froid  of 
one  who  knew  that,  after  all,  he  was  the  only  carrier  on  the 
road,  and  that  the  vicarage  was  five  miles  from  the  necessaries 
of  life  ;  '  it's  a  bad  job,  and  I's  not  goin'  to  say  it  isn't.  But  ya 
jest  look  'ere,  mum,  what's  a  man  to  du  wi  a  daft  thingamy 
like  that,  as  caan't  teak  a  plain  order,  and  spiles  a  poor  man  s 
business  as  caan;t  help  hissel'  1 ' 

And  Mr.  Backhouse  pointed  with  withering  scorn  to  a  small, 
shrunken  old  man,  who  sat  dangling  his  legs  on  the  shaft  of 
the  cart,  and  whose  countenance  wore  a  singular  expression  of 
mingled  meekness  and  composure,  as  his  partner  flourished  an 
indignant  finger  towards  him. 

'  Jim,'  cried  Mrs.  Thornburgh  reproachfully,  '  I  did  think  you 
would  have  taken  more  pains  about  my  order  ! ' 

'  Yis,  mum,'  said  the  old  man  placidly,  '  ya  might  'a'  thowt  it. 
I's  reet  sorry,  bit  ya  caan't  help  these  things  swmtimes — an'  it's 
naw  gud,  a  hollerin'  ower  'em  like  a  mad  bull.  Aa  tuke  yur  bit 
paper  to  Randall's  and  aa  laft  it  wi'  'em  to  mek  up,  an'  than,  aa, 
weel,  aa  went  to  a  frind,  an'  ee  may  hev  giv'  me  a  glass  of  yale, 
aa  doon't  say  ee  dud — but  ee  may,  I  ween't  sweer.  Hawsomiver, 
aa  niver  thowt  naw  mair  aboot  it,  nor  mair  did  John,  so  ee 
needn't  taak — till  we  wur  jest  two  mile  from  'ere.  An'  ee's  a 
gon'  on  sence  !  My  !  an'  a  larroping  the  poor  beeast  like  ony- 
thing  ! ' 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  stood  aghast  at  the  calmness  of  this  auda- 
cious recital.  As  for  John,  he  looked  on  surveying  his  brother's 
philosophical  demeanour  at  first  with  speechless  wrath,  and 
then  with  an  inscrutable  mixture  of  expressions,  in  which,  how- 
ever, any  one  accustomed  to  his  weather-beaten  countenance 
would  have  probably  read  a  hidden  admiration. 

'  Weel,  aa  niver  ! '  he  exclaimed,  when  Jim's  explanatory 
remarks  had  come  to  an  end,  swinging  himself  up  on  to  his  seat 
and  gathering  up  the  reins.  '  Yur  a  boald  'un  to  tell  the  missus 
theer  to  hur  feeace  as  how  ya  wur  'tossicatit  whan  yur  owt  ta 
been  duing  yur  larful  business.  Aa've  doon  wi'  yer.  Aa  aims 
to  please  ma  coostomers,  an'  aa  caan't  abide  sek  wark.  Yur  like 
an  oald  kneyfe,  I  can  mak'  nowt  o'  ya',  nowder  back  nor  edge.' 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  wrung  her  fat  short  hands  in  despair,  mak- 
ing little  incoherent  laments  and  suggestions  as  she  saw  him 


20  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

about  to  depart,  of  which  John  at  last  gathered  the  main  pur- 
port to  be  that  she  wished  him  to  go  back  to  Whinborough  for 
her  precious  parcel. 

He  shook  his  head  compassionately  over  the  preposterous 
state  of  mind  betrayed  by  such  a  demand,  and  with  a  fresh 
burst  of  abuse  of  his  brother,  and  an  assurance  to  the  vicar's 
wife  that  he  meant  to  '  gie  that  oald  man  nawtice  when  he  got 
haum ;  he  wasn't  goan  to  hev  his  bisness  spiled  for  nowt  by  an 
oald  ijiot  wi'  a  hed  as  full  o'  yale  as  a  hayrick's  full  of  mice,'  he 
raised  his  whip  and  the  clattering  vehicle  moved  forward :  Jim 
meanwhile  preserving  through  all  his  brother's  wrath  and  Mrs. 
Thornburghs  waitings the  same  mild  and  even  countenance, the 
meditative  and  friendly  aspect  of  the  philosopher  letting  the 
world  go  '  as  e'en  it  will.' 

So  Mrs.  Thornburgh  was  left  gasping,  watching  the  progress 
of  the  lumbering  cart  along  the  bit  of  road  leading  to  the  hamlet 
at  the  head  of  the  valley,  with  so  limp  and  crestfallen  an  aspect 
that  even  the  gaunt  and  secretly  jubilant  Sarah  was  moved  to 
pity. 

Why,  missis,  we'll  do  very  well.  I'll  hev  some  scones  in 
t'oven  in  naw  time,  an'  theer's  finger  biscuits,  an'  wi'  buttered 
toast  an'  sum  o'  t'  best  jams,  if  they  don't  hev  enuf  to  eat  they 
ought  to.'  Then,  dropping  her  voice,  she  asked  with  a  hurried 
change  of  tone,  '  Did  ye  ask  un'  hoo  his  daater  is  ? ' 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  started.  Her  pastoral  conscience  was 
smitten.  She  opened  the  gate  and  waved  violently  after  the 
cart.  John  pulled  his  horse  up,  and  with  a  few  quick  steps  she 
brought  herself  within  speaking,  or  rather  shouting,  distance. 

'  How's  your  daughter  to-day,  John  ? ' 

The  old  man's  face  peering  round  the  oilcloth  hood  of  the 
cart  was  darkened  by  a  sudden  cloud  as  he  caught  the  words. 
His  stern  lips  closed.  He  muttered  something  inaudible  to  Mrs. 
Thornburgh  and  whipped  up  his  horse  again.  The  cart  started 
off,  and  Mrs.  Thornburgh  was  left  staring  into  the  receding  eyes 
of  'Jim  the  Noodle,'  who,  from  his  seat  on  the  near  shaft, 
regarded  her  with  a  gaze  which  had  passed  from  benevolence 
into  a  preternatural  solemnity. 

'Hes  sparin'  oy  'is  speach  is  John  Backhouse,'  said  Sarah 
grimly,  as  her  mistress  returned  to  her.  '  Maybe  ee's  aboot 
reet.  It's  a  bad  business  an'  ee'll  not  mend  it  wi'  taakin'.' 

Mrs.  Thornburgh,  however,  could  not  apply  herself  to  the 
case  of  Mary  Backhouse.  At  any  other  moment  it  would  have 
excited  in  her  breast  the  shuddering  interest  which,  owing  to 
certain  peculiar  attendant  circumstances,  it  awakened  in  every 
other  woman  in  Long  Whindale.  But  her  mind — such  are  the 
limitations  of  even  clergymen's  wives — was  now  absorbed  by 
her  own  misfortune.  Her  very  cap-strings  seemed  to  hang 
limp  with  depression,  as  she  followed  Sarah  dejectedly  into 
the  kitchen,  and  gave  what  attention  she  could  to  those  second- 
best  arrangements  so  depressing  to  the  idealist  temper. 


CHAP,  ii  WESTMORELAND  21 

Poor  soul !  All  the  charm  and  glitter  of  her  little  social 
adventure  was  gone.  When  she  once  more  emerged  upon  the 
lawn,  and  languidly  readjusted  her  spectacles,  she  was  weighed 
down  by  the  thought  that  in  two  hours  Mrs.  Seaton  would  be 
upon  her.  Nothing  of  this  kind  ever  happened  to  Mrs.  Seaton. 
The  universe  obeyed  her  nod.  No  carrier  conveying  goods  to 
her  august  door  ever  got  drunk  or  failed  to  deliver  his  consign- 
ment. The  thing  was  inconceivable.  Mrs.  Thornburgh  was 
well  aware  of  it. 

Should  William  be  informed  1  Mrs.  Thornburgh  had  a  rooted 
belief  in  the  brutality  of  husbands  in  all  domestic  crises,  and 
would  have  preferred  not  to  inform  him.  But  she  had  also  a 
dismal  certainty  that  the  secret  would  burn  a  hole  in  her  till  it 
was  confessed — bill  and  all.  Besides — frightful  thought!  — 
would  they  have  to  eat  up  all  those  meringues  next  day  ? 

Her  reflections  at  last  became  so  depressing  that,  with  a 
natural  epicurean  instinct,  she  tried  violently  to  turn  her  mind 
away  from  them.  Luckily  she  was  assisted  by  a  sudden  per- 
ception of  the  roof  and  chimneys  of  Burwood,  the  Leyburns' 
house,  peeping  above  the  trees  to  the  left.  At  sight  of  them  a 
smile  overspread  her  plump  and  gently  wrinkled  face.  She  fell 
gradually  into  a  train  of  thought,  as  feminine  as  that  in  which 
she  had  been  just  indulging,  but  infinitely  more  pleasing. 

For,  with  regard  to  the  Leyburns,  at  this  present  moment 
Mrs.  Thornburgh  felt  herself  in  the  great  position  of  tutelary 
divinity  or  guardian  angel.  At  least  if  divinities  and  guardian 
angels  do  not  concern  themselves  with  the  questions  to  which 
Mrs.  Thornburgh's  mind  was  now  addressed,  it  would  clearly 
have  been  the  opinion  of  the  vicar's  wife  that  they  ought  to 
do  so. 

'  Who  else  is  there  to  look  after  these  girls,  I  should  like  to 
know,'  Mrs.  Thornburgh  inquired  of  herself,  '  if  I  don't  do  it  1 
As  if  girls  married  themselves !_  People  may  talk  of  their 
independence  nowadays  as  much  as  they  like — it  always  has  to 
be  done  for  them,  one  way  or  another.  Mrs.  Leyburn,  poor 
lackadaisical  thing1!  is  no  good  whatever.  No  more  is  Catherine. 
They  both  behave  as  if  husbands  tumbled  into  your  mouth  for 
the  asking.  Catherine's  too  good  for  this  world — but  if  she 
doesn't  do  it,  I  must.  Why,  that  girl  Rose  is  a  beauty — if  they 
didn't  let  her  wear  those  ridiculous  mustard-coloured  things, 
and  do  her  hair  fit  to  frighten  the  crows  !  Agnes  too — so  lady- 
like and  well-mannered  ;  she'd  do  credit  to  any  man.  Well,  we 
shall  see,  we  shall  see  ! ' 

And  Mrs.  Thornburgh  gently  shook  her  gray  curls  from  side 
to  side,  while  her  eyes,  fixed  on  the  open  spare  room  window, 
shone  with  meaning. 

'So  eligible,  too — private  means,  no  encumbrances,  and  as 
good  as  gold.' 

She  sat  lost  a  moment  in  a  pleasing  dream. 

'Shall  I  bring  oot  the  tea  to  you  theer,  mum  ?'  called  Sarah 


22  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

gruffly,  from  the  garden  door.  'Master  and  Mr.  Elsmere  are 
just  coomin'  down  t'  field  by  t'  stepping-stones.' 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  signalled  assent  and  the  tea-table  was 
brought.  Afternoon  tea  was  by  no  means  a  regular  institution 
at  the  vicarage  of  Long  Whindale,  and  Sarah  never  supplied  it 
without  signs  of  protest.  But  when  a  guest  was  in  the  house 
Mrs.  Thornburgh  insisted  upon  it ;  her  obstinacy  in  the  matter, 
like  her  dreams  of  cakes  and  confections,  being  all  part  of  her 
determination  to  move  with  the  times,  in  spite  of  the  station  to 
which  Providence  had  assigned  her. 

A  minute  afterwards  the  vicar,  a  thick-set  gray -haired  man 
of  sixty,  accompanied  by  a  tall  younger  man  in  clerical  dress, 
emerged  upon  the  lawn. 

'  Welcome  sight ! '  cried  Mr.  Thornburgh  ;  '  Robert  and  I  have 
been  coveting  that  tea  for  the  last  hour.  You  guessed  very  well, 
Emma,  to  have  it  just  ready  for  us.' 

'Oh,  that  was  Sarah.  She  saw  you  coming  down  to  the 
stepping-stones,'  replied  his  wife,  pleased,  however,  by  any  mark 
of  appreciation  from  her  mankind,  however  small.  '  Robert,  I 
hope  you  haven't  been  walked  off  your  legs  ?' 

'  What,  in  this  air,  cousin  Emma  ?  I  could  walk  from  sunrise 
to  sundown.  Let  no  one  call  me  an  invalid  any  more.  Hence- 
forth I  am  a  Hercules.' 

And  he  threw  himself  on  the  rug  which  Mrs.  Thornburgh's 
motherly  providence  had  spread  on  the  grass  for  him,  with  a 
smile  and  a  look  of  supreme  physical  contentment,  which  did 
indeed  almost  efface  the  signs  of  recent  illness  in  the  ruddy 
boyish  face. 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  studied  him  ;  her  eye  caught  first  of  all  by 
the  stubble  of  reddish  hair  which  as  he  took  off  his  hat  stood  up 
straight  and  stiff  all  over  his  head  with  an  odd  wildness  and 
aggressiveness.  She  involuntarily  thought,  basing  her  inward 
comment  on  a  complexity  of  reasons — '  Dear  me,  what  a  pity  ; 
it  spoils  his  appearance  ! ' 

'I  apologise,  I  apologise,  cousin  Emma,  once  for  all,'  said  the 
young  man,  surprising  her  glance,  and  despairingly  smoothing 
down  his  recalcitrant  locks.  'Let  us  hope  that  mountain  air 
will  quicken  the  pace  of  it  before  it  is  necessary  for  me  to 
present  a  dignified  appearance  at  Murewell.' 

He  looked  up  at  her  with  a  merry  flash  in  his  gray  eyes,  and 
her  old  face  brightened  visibly  as  she  realised  afresh  that  in 
spite  of  the  grotesqueness  of  his  cropped  hair,  her  guest  was  a 
most  attractive  creature.  Not  that  he  could  boast  much  in  the 
way  of  regular  good  looks  :  the  mouth  was  large,  the  nose  of  no 
particular  outline,  and  in  general  the  cutting  of  the  face,  though 
strong  and  characteristic,  had  a  bluntness  and  ndivetd  like  a 
vigorous  unfinished  sketch.  This  bluntness  of  line,  however, 
was  balanced  by  a  great  delicacy  of  tint — the  pink  and  white 
complexion  of  a  girl,  indeed — enhanced  by  the  bright  reddish 
hair,  and  quick  gray  eyes. 


CHAP,  ii  WESTMORELAND  23 

The  figure  was  also  a  little  out  of  drawing,  so  to  speak ;  it 
was  tall  and  loosely -jointed.  The  general  impression  was  one 
of  agility  and  power.  But  if  you  looked  closer  you  saw  that  the 
shoulders  were  narrow,  the  arms  inordinately  long,  and  the 
extremities  too  small  for  the  general  height.  Robert  Elsmere's 
hand  was  the  hand  of  a  woman,  and  few  people  ever  exchanged 
a  first  greeting  with  its  very  tall  owner  without  a  little  shock 
of  surprise. 

Mr.  Thornburgh  and  his  guest  had  visited  a  few  houses  in 
the  course  of  their  walk,  and  the  vicar  plunged  for  a  minute  or 
two  into  some  conversation  about  local  matters  with  his  wife. 
But  Mrs.  Thornburgh,  it  was  soon  evident,  was  giving  him  but 
a  scatterbrained  attention.  Her  secret  was  working  in  her 
ample  breast.  Very  soon  she  could  contain  it  no  longer,  and 
breaking  in  upon  her  husband's  parish  news,  she  tumbled  it  all 
out  pell-mell,  with  a  mixture  of  discomfiture  and  defiance  in- 
finitely diverting.  She  could  not  keep  a  secret,  but  she  also 
could  not  bear  to  give  William  an  advantage. 

William  certainly  took  his  advantage.  He  did  what  his  wife 
in  her  irritation  had  precisely  foreseen  that  he  would  do.  He 
first  stared,  then  fell  into  a  guffaw  of  laughter,  and  as  soon  as 
he  had  recovered  breath,  into  a  series  of  unfeeling  comments 
which  drove  Mrs.  Thornburgh  to  desperation. 

'  If  you  will  set  your  mind,  my  dear,  on  things  we  plain  f oiks 
can  do  perfectly  well  without ' — et  cetera,  et  cetera — the  hus- 
band's point  of  view  can  be  imagined.  Mrs.  Thornburgh  could 
have  shaken  her  good  man,  especially  as  there  was  nothing  new 
to  her  in  his  remarks  :  she  had  known  to  a  T  beforehand  exactly 
what  he  would  say.  She  took  up  her  knitting  in  a  great  hurry, 
the  needles  clicking  angrily,  her  gray  curls  quivering  under  the 
energy  of  her  hands  and  arms,  while  she  launched  at  her 
husband  various  retorts  as  to  his  lack  of  consideration  for  her 
efforts  and  her  inconvenience,  which  were  only  very  slightly 
modified  by  the  presence  of  a  stranger. 

Robert  Elsmere  meanwhile  lay  on  the  grass,  his  face  discreetly 
turned  away  .an  uncontrollable  smile  twitching  the  corners  of 
his  mouth.  Everything  was  fresh  and  piquant  up  here  in  this 
remote  corner  of  the  north  country,  whether  the  mountain  air 
or  the  wind-blown  streams,  or  the  manners  and  customs  of  the 
inhabitants.  His  cousin's  wife,  in  spite  of  her  ambitious  con- 
ventionalities, was  really  the  child  of  Nature  to  a  refreshing 
degree.  One  does  not  see  these  types,  he  said  to  himself,  in  the 
cultivated  monotony  of  Oxford  or  London.  She  was  like  a  bit 
of  a  bygone  world — Miss  Austen's  or  Miss  Ferrier's — unearthed 
for  his  amusement.  He  could  not  for  the  life  of  him  help  taking 
the  scenes  of  this  remote  rural  existence,  which  was  quite  new 
to  him,  as  though  they  were  the  scenes  of  some  comedy  of 
manners. 

Presently,  however,  the  vicar  became  aware  that  the  passage 
of  arms  between  himself  and  his  spouse  was  becoming  just  a 


24  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  T 

little  indecorous.  He  got  up  with  a  '  Hem  !'  intended  to  put  an 
end  to  it,  and  deposited  his  cup. 

'Well,  my  dear,  have  it  as  you  please.  It  all  comes  of  your 
determination  to  have  Mrs.  Seaton.  Why  couldn't  you  just  ask 
the  Leyburns  and  let  us  enjoy  ourselves  ? ' 

With  this  final  shaft  he  departed  to  see  that  Jane,  the  little 
maid  whom  Sarah  ordered  about,  had  not,  in  cleaning  the  study 
for  the  evening's  festivities,  put  his  last  sermon  into  the  waste- 
paper  basket.  His  wife  looked  after  him  with  eyes  that  spoke 
unutterable  things. 

'You  would  never  think,'  she  said  in  an  agitated  voice  to 
young  Elsmere,  'that  I  had  consulted  Mr.  Thornburgh  as  to 
every  invitation,  that  he  entirely  agreed  with  me  that  one  must 
be  civil  to  Mrs.  Seaton,  considering  that  she  can  make  anybody's 
life  a  burden  to  them  about  here  that  isn't ;  but  it's  no  use.' 

And  she  fell  back  on  her  knitting  with  redoubled  energy,  her 
face  full  of  a  half -tearful  intensity  of  meaning.  Robert  Elsmere 
restrained  a  strong  inclination  to  laugh,  and  set  himself  instead 
to  distract  and  console  her.  He  expressed  sympathy  with  her 
difficulties,  he  talked  to  her  about  her  party,  he  got  from  her 
the  names  and  histories  of  the  guests.  How  Miss  Austenish  it 
sounded :  the  managing  rector's  wife,  her  still  more  managing 
old  maid  of  a  sister,  the  neighbouring  clergyman  who  played 
the  flute,  the  local  doctor,  and  a  pretty  daughter  just  out — 'Very 
pretty,'  sighed  Mrs.  Thornburgh,  who  was  now  depressed  all 
round,  '  but  all  flounces  and  frills  and  nothing  to  say ' — and  last 
of  all,  those  three  sisters,  the  Leyburns,  who  seemed  to  be  on  a 
different  level,  and  whom  he  had  heard  mentioned  so  often  since 
his  arrival  by  both  husband  and  wife. 

'  Tell  me  about  the  Miss  Leyburns,'  he  said  presently.  '  You 
and  cousin  William  seem  to  have  a  great  affection  for  them.  Do 
they  live  near  ? ' 

'  Oh,  quite  close,'  cried  Mrs.  Thornburgh,  brightening  at  last, 
and  like  a  great  general,  leaving  one  scheme  in  ruins,  only  the 
more  ardently  to  take  up  another.  '  There  is  the  house,'  and  she 

Eointed  out  Burwood  among  its  trees.  Then  with  her  eye  eagerly 
xed  upon  him,  she  fell  into  a  more  or  less  incoherent  account 
of  her  favourites.  She  laid  on  her  colours  thickly,  and  Elsmere 
at  once  assumed  extravagance. 

'  A  saint,  a  beauty,  and  a  wit  all  to  yourselves  in  these  wilds  ! ' 
he  said,  laughing.  '  What  luck  !  But  what  on  earth  brought 
them  here — a  widow  and  three  daughters — from  the  south  ?  It 
was  an  odd  settlement  surelyj  though  you  have  one  of  the  love- 
liest valleys  and  the  purest  airs  in  England.' 

'  Oh,  as  to  lovely  valleys,'  said  Mrs.  Thornburgh,  sighing,  '  I 
think  it  very  dull ;  I  always  have.  When  one  has  to  depend  for 
everything  on  a  carrier  that  gets  drunk,  too  !  Why,  you  know 
they  belong  here.  They're  real  Westmoreland  people. 

'  What  does  that  mean  exactly  ? ' 

'  Oh,  their  grandfather  was  a  farmer,  just  like  one  of  the 


CHAP,  n  WESTMORELAND  25 

common  farmers  about.  Only  his  land  was  his  own,  and  theirs 
isn't.' 

'He  was  one  of  the  last  of  the  statesmen,'  interposed  Mr. 
Thornburgh  —  who,  having  rescued  his  sermon  from  Jane's 
tender  mercies,  and  put  out  his  modest  claret  and  sherry  for 
the  evening,  had  strolled  out  again  and  found  himself  impelled 
as  usual  to  put  some  precision  into  his  wife's  statements — '  one 
of  the  small  freeholders  who  have  almost  disappeared  here  as 
elsewhere.  The  story  of  the  Leyburns  always  seems  to  me 
typical  of  many  things.' 

Robert  looked  inquiry,  and  the  vicar,  sitting  down — having 
first  picked  up  his  wife's  ball  of  wool  as  a  peace-offering,  which 
was  loftily  accepted — launched  into  a  narrative  which  may  be 
here  somewhat  condensed. 

The  Leyburns'  grandfather,  it  appeared,  had  been  a  typical 
north-country  peasant — honest,  with  strong  passions  both  of 
love  and  hate,  thinking  nothing  of  knocking  down  his  wife 
with  the  poker,  and  frugal  in  all  things  save  drink.  Drink, 
however,  was  ultimately  his  ruin,  as  it  was  the  ruin  of  most  of 
the  Cumberland  statesmen.  '  The  people  about  here,'  said  the 
vicar,  '  say  he  drank  away  an  acre  a  year.  He  had  some  fifty 
acres,  and  it  took  about  thirty  years  to  beggar  him.' 

Meanwhile,  this  brutal,  rollicking,  strong-natured  person  had 
sons  and  daughters — plenty  of  them.  Most  of  them,  even  the 
daughters,  were  brutal  and  rollicking  too.  Of  one  of  the 
daughters,  now  dead,  it  was  reported  that,  having  on  one 
occasion  discovered  her  father,  then  an  old  infirm  man,  sitting 
calmly  by  the  fire  beside  the  prostrate  form  of  his  wife,  whom 
he  had  just  felled  with  his  crutch,  she  had  taken  off  her  wooden 
shoe  and  given  her  father  a  clout  on  the  head,  which  left  his 
gray  hair  streaming  with  blood;  after  which  she  had  calmly 
put  the  horse  into  the  cart,  and  driven  off  to  fetch  the  doctor 
to  both  her  parents.  But  among  this  grim  and  earthy  crew 
there  was  one  exception,  a  '  hop  out  of  kin,'  of  whom  all  the 
rest  made  sport.  This  was  the  second  son,  Richard,  who  showed 
such  a  persistent  tendency  to  'book-larnin','  and  such  a  per- 
sistent idiocy  in  all  matters  pertaining  to  the  land,  that  nothing 
was  left  to  the  father  at  last  but  to  send  him  with  many  oaths 
to  the  grammar  school  at  Whinborough.  From  the  moment 
the  boy  got  a  footing  in  the  school  he  hardly  cost  his  father 
another  penny.  He  got  a  local  bursary  which  paid  his  school 
expenses,  he  never  missed  a  remove  or  failed  to  gain  a  prize, 
and  finally  won  a  close  scholarship  which  carried  him  triumph- 
antly to  Queen's  College. 

His  family  watched  his  progress  with  a  gaping,  half -con- 
temptuous amazement,  till  he  announced  himself  as  safely  in- 
stalled at  Oxford,  having  borrowed  from  a  Whinborough  patron 
the  modest  sum  necessary  to  pay  his  college  valuation — a  sum 
which  wild  horses  could  not  nave  dragged  out  of  his  father, 
now  sunk  over  head  and  ears  in  debt  and  drink. 


26  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

From  that  moment  they  practically  lost  sight  of  him.  He 
sent  the  class  list  which  contained  his  name  among  the  Firsts 
to  his  father ;  in  the  same  way  he  communicated  the  news  of 
his  Fellowship  at  Queen's,  his  ordination  and  his  appointment 
to  the  headmastership  of  a  south -country  grammar  school. 
None  of  his  communications  were  ever  answered  till,  in  the 
very  last  year  of  his  father's  life,  the  eldest  son,  who  had  a 
shrewder  eye  all  round  to  the  main  chance  than  the  rest,  applied 
to  '  Dick '  for  cash  wherewith  to  meet  some  of  the  family  neces- 
sities. The  money  was  promptly  sent,  together  with  photo- 
graphs of  Dick's  wife  and  children.  These  last  were  not  taken 
much  notice  of.  These  Leyburns  were  a  hard,  limited,  incurious 
set,  and  they  no  longer  regarded  Dick  as  one  of  themselves. 

4  Then  came  the  old  man's  death,'  said  Mr.  Thornburgh.  '  It 
happened  the  year  after  I  took  the  living.  Richard  Leyburn 
was  sent  for  and  came.  I  never  saw  such  a  scene  in  my  life  as 
the  funeral  supper.  It  was  kept  up  in  the  old  style.  Three  of 
Leyburn's  sons  were  there :  two  of  them  farmers  like  himself, 
one  a  clerk  from  Manchester,  a  daughter  married  to  a  tradesman 
in  Whinborough,  a  brother  of  the  old  man,  who  was  under  the 
table  bef oz-e  supper  was  half  over,  and  so  on.  Richard  Leyburn 
wrote  to  ask  me  to  come,  and  I  went  to  support  his  cloth.  But 
I  was  new  to  the  place,'  said  the  vicar,  flushing  a  little,  '  and 
they  belonged  to  a  race  that  had  never  been  used  to  pay  much 
respect  to  parsons.  To  see  that  man  among  the  rest !  He  was 
thin  and  dignified  ;  he  looked  to  me  as  if  he  had  all  the  learning 
imaginable,  and  he  had  large,  absent -looking  eyes,  which,  as 
George,  the  eldest  brother,  said,  gave  you  the  impression  of 
some  one  that  "  had  lost  somethin'  when  he  was  nobbut  a  lad, 
and  had  gone  seekin'  it  iver  sence."  He  was  formidable  to  me  ; 
but  between  us  we  couldn't  keep  the  rest  of  the  party  in  order, 
so  when  the  orgie  had  gone  on  a  certain  time,  we  left  it  and 
went  out  into  the  air.  It  was  an  August  night.  I  remember 
Leyburn  threw  back  his  head  and  drank  it  in.  "I  haven't 
breathed  this  air  for  five-and-twenty  years,"  he  said.  "  I  thought 
I  hated  the  place,  and  in  spite  of  that  drunken  crew  in  there,  it 
draws  me  to  it  like  a  magnet.  I  feel,  after  all,  that  I  have  the 
fells  in  my  blood."  He  was  a  curious  man,  'a  refined-looking 
melancholy  creature,  with  a  face  that  reminded  you  of  Words- 
worth, and  cold  donnish  ways,  except  to  his  children  and  the 
poor.  I  always  thought  his  Me  had  disappointed  him  somehow.' 

4  Yet  one  would  think,'  said  Robert,  opening  his  eyes,  '  that 
he  had  made  a  very  considerable  success  of  it ! ' 

'  Well,  I  don't  know  how  it  was,'  said  the  vicar,  whose  analysis 
of  character  never  went  very  far.  '  Anyhow,  next  day  he  went 
peering  about  the  place  and  the  mountains  and  the  lands  his 
father  had  lost.  And  George,  the  eldest  brother,  who  had  in- 
herited the  farm,  watched  him  without  a  word,  in  the  way  these 
Westmoreland  folk  have,  and  at  last  offered  him  what  remained 
of  the  place  for  a  fancy  price.  I  told  him  it  was  a  preposterous 


CHAP,  it  WESTMORELAND  27 

sum.  but  he  wouldn't  bargain.  "I  shall  bring  my  wife  and 
children  here  in  the  holidays,"  he  said,  "  and  the  money  will  set 
George  up  in  California."  So  he  paid  through  the  nose,  and 
got  possession  of  the  old  house,  in  which,  I  should  think,  he 
had  passed  about  as  miserable  a  childhood  as  it  was  possible  to 
pass.  There's  no  accounting  for  tastes.' 

'  And  then  the  next  summer  they  all  came  down,'  interrupted 
Mrs.  Thornburgh.  She  disliked  a  long  story  as  she  disliked 
being  read  aloud  to.  '  Catherine  was  fifteen,  not  a  bit  like  a 
child.  You  used  to  see  her  everywhere  with  her  father.  To 
my  mind  he  was  always  exciting  her  brain  too  much,  but  he 
was  a  man  you  could  not  say  a  word  to.  I  don't  care  what 
William  says  about  his  being  like  Wordsworth ;  he  just  gave 
you  the  blues  to  look  at.' 

'  It  was  so  strange,'  said  the  vicar  meditatively,  '  to  see  them 
in  that  house.  If  you  knew  the  things  that  used  to  go  on  there 
in  old  days — the  savages  that  livecf  there.  And  then  to  see 
those  three  delicately  brought-up  children  going  in  and  out  of 
the  parlour  where  old  Leyburn  used  to  sit  smoking  and  drink- 
ing ;  and  Dick  Leyburn  walking  about  in  a  white  tie,  and  the 
same  men  touching  their  hats  to  him  who  had  belaboured  him 
when  he  was  a  boy  at  the  village  school — it  was  queer.' 

'  A  curious  little  bit  of  social  history,'  said  Elsmere.  '  Well, 
and  then  he  died  and  the  family  lived  on  1 ' 

'  Yes,  he  died  the  year  after  he  bought  the  place.  And  per- 
haps the  most  interesting  thing  of  all  has  been  the  development 
of  his  eldest  daughter.  She  has  watched  over  her  mother,  she 
has  brought  up  her  sisters  ;  but  much  more  than  that :  she  has 
become  a  sort  of  Deborah  in  these  valleys,'  said  the  vicar,  smiling. 
'  I  don't  count  for  much,  she  counts  for  a  great  deal.  I  can't 
get  the  people  to  tell  me  their  secrets,  she  can.  There  is  a  sort 
of  natural  sympathy  between  them  and  her.  She  nurses  them, 
she  scolds  them,  she  preaches  to  them,  and  they  take  it  from 
her  when  they  won't  take  it  from  us.  Perhaps  it  is  the  feeling 
of  blood.  Perhaps  they  think  it  as  mysterious  a  dispensation 
of  Providence  as  I  do  that  that  brutal,  swearing,  whisky-drink- 
ing stock  should  have  ended  in  anything  so  saintly  and  so 
beautiful  as  Catherine  Leyburn.' 

The  quiet,  commonplace  clergyman  spoke  with  a  sudden 
tremor  of  feeling.  His  wife,  however,  looked  at  him  with  a 
dissatisfied  expi-ession. 

'You  always  talk,'  she  said,  'as  if  there  were  no  one  but 
Catherine.  People  generally  like  the  other  two  much  better. 
Catherine  is  so  stand-off.' 

'  Oh,  the  other  two  are  very  well,'  said  the  vicar,  but  in  a 
different  tone. 

Robert  sat  ruminating.  Presently  his  host  and  hostess  went 
in,  and  the  young  man  went  sauntering  up  the  climbing  garden- 
path  to  the  point  where  only  a  railing  divided  it  from  the  fell- 
side.  From  here  his  eye  commanded  the  whole  of  the  upper  end 


28  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

of  the  valley — a  bare,  desolate  recess  filled  with  evening 
shadow,  and  walled  round  by  masses  of  gray  and  purple  crag, 
except  in  one  spot,  where  a  green  intervening  fell  marked  the 
course  of  the  pass  connecting  the  dale  with  the  Ullswater  dis- 
trict. Below  him  were  church  and  parsonage ;  beyond,  the  stone- 
filled  babbling  river,  edged  by  intensely  green  fields,  which 
melted  imperceptibly  into  the  browner  stretches  of  the  opposite 
mountain.  Most  of  the  scene,  except  where  the  hills  at  the  end 
rose  highest  and  shut  out  the  sun,  was  bathed  in  quiet  light. 
The  white  patches  on  the  farmhouses,  the  heckberry  trees  along 
the  river  and  the  road,  caught  and  emphasised  the  golden  rays 
which  were  flooding  into  the  lower  valley  as  into  a  broad  green 
cup.  Close  by,  in  the  little  vicarage  orchard,  were  fruit  trees  in 
blossom ;  the  air  was  mild  and  fragrant,  though  to  the  young 
man  from  the  warmer  south  there  was  still  a  bracing  quality  in 
the  soft  western  breeze  which  blew  about  him. 

He  stood  there  bathed  in  silent  enchantment,  an  eager  nature 
going  out  to  meet  and  absorb  into  itself  the  beauty  and  peace 
of  the  scene.  Lines  of  Wordsworth  were  on  his  lips  ;  the  little 
well-worn  volume  was  in  his  pocket,  but  he  did  not  need  to 
bring  it  out ;  and  his  voice  had  all  a  poet's  intensity  of  emphasis 
as  he  strolled  along,  reciting  under  his  breath — 

'  It  is  a  beauteous  evening,  calm  and  free, 
The  holy  time  is  quiet  as  a  nun 
Breathless  with  adoration  ! ' 

Presently  his  eye  was  once  more  caught  by  the  roof  of  Bur- 
wood,  lying  beneath  him  on  its  promontory  of  land,  in  the  quiet 
shelter  of  its  protecting  trees.  He  stopped,  and  a  delicate  sense 
of  harmonious  association  awoke  in  him.  That  girl,  atoning  as 
it  were  by  her  one  white  life  for  all  the  crimes  and  coarseness  of 
her  ancestry :  the  idea  of  her  seemed  to  steal  into  the  solemn 
golden  evening  and  give  it  added  poetry  and  meaning.  The 
young  man  felt  a  sudden  strong  curiosity  to  see  her. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE  festal  tea  had  begun,  and  Mrs.  Thornburgh  was  presiding. 
Opposite  to  her,  on  the  vicar's  left,  sat  the  formidable  rector's 
wife.  Poor  Mrs.  Thornburgh  had  said  to  herself  as  she  entered 
the  room  on  the  arm  of  Mr.  Mayhew,  the  incumbent  of  the 
neighbouring  valley  of  Shanmoor,  that  the  first  coup  d'oeil  was 
good.  The  flowers  had  been  arranged  in  the  afternoon  by  Hose  ; 
Sarah's  exertions  had  made  the  silver  shine  again ;  a  pleasing 
odour  of  good  food  underlay  the  scent  of  the  bluebells  and  fern  • 
and  what  with  the  snowy  table-linen,  and  the  pretty  dresses  ana 
bright  faces  of  the  younger  people,  the  room  seemed  to  be  full 
of  an  incessant  play  of  crisp  and  delicate  colour. 


CHAP,  in  WESTMORELAND  29 

But  just  as  the  vicar's  wife  was  sinking  into  her  seat  witli  a 
little  sigh  of  wearied  satisfaction,  she  caught  sight  suddenly  of 
an  eye-glass  at  the  other  end  of  the  table  slowly  revolving  in  a 
large  and  jewelled  hand.  The  judicial  eye  behind  the  eye-glass 
travelled  round  the  table,  lingering,  as  it  seemed  to  Mrs  Thorn- 
burgh's  excited  consciousness,  on  every  spot  where  cream  or 
jelly  or  meringue  should  have  been  and  was  not.  When  it 
dropped  with  a  harsh  little  click,  the  hostess,  unable  to  restrain 
herself,  rushed  into  desperate  conversation  with  Mr.  Mayhew, 
giving  vent  to  incoherencies  in  the  course  of  the  first  act  of  the 
meal  which  did  but  confirm  her  neighbour — a  grim,  uncommuni- 
cative person — in  his  own  devotion  to  a  policy  of  silence.  Mean- 
while the  vicar  was  grappling  on  very  unequal  terms  with  Mrs. 
Seaton.  Mrs.  Ley  burn  had  fallen  to  young  Elsmere.  Catherine 
Leyburn  was  paired  off  with  Dr.  Baker,  Agnes  with  Mr.  May- 
hew's  awkward  son — a  tongue-tied  youth,  lately  an  unattached 
student  at  Oxford,  but  now  relegated,  owing  to  an  invincible 
antipathy  to  Greek  verbs,  to  his  native  air,  till  some  other  open- 
ing into  the  great  world  should  be  discovered  for  him. 

Hose  was  on  Eobert  Elsmere's  right.  Agnes  had  coaxed  her 
into  a  white  dress  as  being  the  least  startling  garment  she  pos- 
sessed, and  she  was  like  a  Stothard  picture  with  her  high  waist, 
her  blue  sash  ribbon,  her  slender  neck  and  brilliant  head.  She 
had  already  cast  many  curious  glances  at  the  Thornburghs' 
guest.  '  Not  a  prig,  at  any  rate,'  she  thought  to  herself  with 
satisfaction,  '  so  Agnes  is  quite  wrong.' 

As  for  the  young  man,  who  was,  to  begin  with,  in  that  state 
which  so  often  follows  on  the  long  confinement  of  illness,  when 
the  light  seems  brighter  and  scents  keener  and  experience  sharper 
than  at  other  times,  he  was  inwardly  confessing  that  Mrs. 
Thornburgh  had  not  been  romancing.  The  vivid  creature  at 
his  elbow,  with  her  still  unsoftened  angles  and  movements,  was 
in  the  first  dawn  of  an  exceptional  beauty ;  the  plain  sister  had 
struck  him  before  supper  in  the  course  of  twenty  minutes'  con- 
versation as  above  the  average  in  point  of  manners  and  talk. 
As  to  Miss  Leyburn,  he  had  so  far  only  exchanged  a  bow  with 
her,  but  he  was  watching  her  now,  as  he  sat  opposite  to  her,  out 
of  his  quick  observant  eyes. 

She,  too,  was  in  white.  As  she  turned  to  speak  to  the  youth 
at  her  side,  Elsmere  caught  the  fine  outline  of  the  head,  the  un- 
usually clear  and  perfect  moulding  of  the  brow,  nose,  and  upper 
lip.  The  hollows  in  the  cheeks  struck  him,  and '  the  way  in 
which  the  breadth  of  the  forehead  somewhat  overbalanced  the 
delicacy  of  the  mouth  and  chin.  The  face,  though  still  quite 
young,  and  expressing  a  perfect  physical  health,  had  the  look  of 
having  been  polished  and  refined  away  to  its  foundations.  There 
was  not  an  ounce  of  superfluous  flesh  on  it,  and  not  a  vestige  of 
Rose's  peach-like  bloom.  Her  profile,  as  he  saw  it  now,  had  the 
firmness,  the  clear  whiteness,  of  a  profile  on  a  Greek  gem. 

She  was  actually  making  that  silent,  awkward   lad  talk ! 


30  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

Robert,  who,  out  of  his  four  years'  experience  as  an  Oxford  tutor, 
had  an  abundant  compassion  for  and  understanding  of  such 
beings  as  young  Mayhew,  watched  her  with  a  pleased  amuse- 
ment, wondering  how  she  did  it.  What  ?  Had  she  got  him  on 
carpentering,  engineering — discovered  his  weak  point  1  Water- 
wheels,  inventors,  steam-engines — and  the  lumpish  lad  all  in  a 
glow,  talking  away  nineteen  to  the  dozen.  What  tact,  what 
kindness  in  her  gray-blue  eyes  ! 

But  he  was  interrupted  by  Mrs.  Seaton,  who  was  perfectly 
well  aware  that  she  had  beside  her  a  stranger  of  some  prestige, 
an  Oxford  man,  and  a  member,  besides,  of  a  well-known  Sussex 
county  family.  She  was  a  large  and  commanding  person,  clad 
in  black  moire  silk.  She  wore  a  velvet  diadem,  Honiton  lace 
lappets,  and  a  variety  of  chains,  beads,  and  bangles  bestrewn 
about  her  that  made  a  tinkling  as  she  moved.  Fixing  her 
neighbour  with  a  bland  majesty  of  eye,  she  inquired  of  him  if 
he  were  '  any  relation  of  Sir  Mowbray  Elsmere  1 '  Robert  re- 
plied that  Sir  Mowbray  Elsmere  was  his  father's  cousin,  and  the 
patron  of  the  living  to  which  he  had  just  been  appointed.  Mrs. 
Seaton  then  graciously  informed  him  that  long  ago — '  when  I 
was  a  girl  in  my  native  Hampshire ' — her  family  and  Sir  Mow- 
bray Elsmere  had  been  on  intimate  terms.  Her  father  had  been 
devoted  to  Sir  Mowbray.  '  And  I,'  she  added,  with  an  evident 
though  lofty  desire  to  please,  '  retain  an  inherited  respect,  sir, 
for  your  name.' 

Robert  bowed,  but  it  was  not  clear  from  his  look  that  the 
rector's  wife  had  made  an  impression.  His  general  conception 
of  his  relative  and  patron  Sir  Mowbray — who  had  been  for  many 
years  the  family  black  sheep — was,  indeed,  so  far  removed  from 
any  notions  of  '  respect,'  that  he  had  some  difficulty  in  keeping 
his  countenance  under  the  lady's  look  and  pose.  He  would  have 
been  still  more  entertained  had  he  known  the  nature  of  the  in- 
timacy to  which  she  referred.  Mrs.  Seaton's  father,  in  his 
capacity  of  solicitor  in  a  small  country  town,  had  acted  as  elec- 
tioneering agent  for  Sir  Mowbray  (then  plain  Mr.)  Elsmere  on 
two  occasions — in  18 — ,  when  his  client  had  been  triumphantly 
returned  at  a  bye-election ;  and  two  years  later,  when  a  repeti- 
tion of  the  tactics,  so  successful  in  the  previous  contest,  led  to  a 
petition,  and  to  the  disappearance  of  the  heir  to  the  Elsmere 
property  from  parliamentary  life. 

Of  these  matters,  however,  he  was  ignorant,  and  Mrs.  Seaton 
did  not  enlighten  him.  Drawing  herself  up  a  little,  and  pro- 
ceeding in  a  more  neutral  tone  than  before,  she  proceeded 
to  put  him  through  a  catechism  on  Oxford,  alternately  cross- 
examining  him  and  expounding  to  him  her  own  views  and  her 
husband's  on  the  functions  of  Universities.  She  and  the  Arch- 
deacon conceived  that  the  Oxford  authorities  were  mainly 
occupied  in  ruining  the  young  men's  health  by  over-exami- 
nation, and  poisoning  their  minds  by  free-thinking  opinions. 
In  her  belief,  if  it  went  on,  the  mothers  of  England  would  refuse 


CHAP,  iti  WESTMORELAND  31 

to  send  their  sons  to  these  ancient  but  deadly  resorts.  She 
looked  at  him  sternly  as  she  spoke,  as  though  defying  him  to 
be  flippant  in  return.  And  he,  indeed,  did  his  polite  best  to  be 
serious. 

But  it  somewhat  disconcerted  him  in  the  middle  to  find  Miss 
Leyburn's  eyes  upon  him.  And  undeniably  there  was  a  spark 
of  laughter  in  them,  quenched,  as  soon  as  his  glance  crossed 
hers,  under  long  lashes.  How  that  spark  had  lit  up  the  grave, 
pale  face  !  He  longed  to  provoke  it  again,  to  cross  over  to  her 
and  say,  '  What  amused  you  ?  Do  you  think  me  very  young 
and  simple  ?  Tell  me  about  these  people.' 

But,  instead,  he  made  friends  with  Rose.  Mrs.  Seaton  was 
soon  engaged  in  giving  the  vicar  advice  on  his  parochial  affairs, 
an  experience  which  generally  ended  by  the  appearance  of  cer- 
tain truculent  elements  in  one  of  the  mildest  of  men.  So  Robert 
was  free  to  turn  to  his  girl  neighbour  and  ask  her  what  people 
meant  by  calling  the  Lakes  rainy. 

'  I  understand  it  is  pouring  at  Oxford.  To-day  your  sky  here 
has  been  without  a  cloud,  and  your  rivers  are  running  dry.' 

'  And  you  have  mastered  our  climate  in  twenty -four  hours, 
like  the  tourists — isn't  it  ? — that  do  the  Irish  question  in  three 
weeks  ? ' 

'  Not  the  answer  of  a  bread-and-butter  miss,'  he  thought  to 
himself,  amused,  '  and  yet  what  a  child  it  looks.' 

He  threw  himself  into  a  war  of  words  with  her,  and  enjoyed 
it  extremely.  Her  brilliant  colouring,  her  gestures  as  fresh  and 
untamed  as  the  movements  of  the  leaping  river  outside,  the 
mixture  in  her  of  girlish  pertness  and  ignorance  with  the  pro- 
mise of  a  remarkable  general  capacity,  made  her  a  most  taking, 
provoking  creature.  Mrs.  Thornburgh — much  recovered  in 
mind  since  Dr.  Baker  had  praised  the  pancakes  by  which 
Sarah  had  sought  to  prove  to  her  mistress  the  superfluity  of 
naughtiness  involved  in  her  recourse  to  foreign  cooks — watched 
the  young  man  and  maiden  with  a  face  which  grew  more  and 
more  radiant.  The  conversation  in  the  garden  had  not  pleased 
her.  Why  should  people  always  talk  of  Catherine ;  Mrs.  Thorn- 
burgh  stood  in  awe  of  Catherine  and  had  given  her  up  in  de- 
spair. It  was  the  other  two  whose  fortunes,  as  possibly  directed 
by  her,  filled  her  maternal  heart  with  sympathetic  emotion. 

Suddenly  in  the  midst  of  her  satisfaction  she  had  a  rude 
shock.  What  on  earth  was  the  vicar  doing  ?  After  they  had 
got  through  better  than  any  one  could  have  hoped,  thanks  to  a 
discreet  silence  and  Sarah's  makeshifts,  there  was  the  master  of 
the  house  pouring  the  whole  tale  of  his  wife's  aspirations  and 
disappointment  into  Mrs.  Seaton's  ear  !  If  it  were  ever  allow- 
able to  rush  upon  your  husband  at  table  and  stop  his  mouth 
with  a  dinner  napkin,  Mrs.  Thornburgh  could  at  this  moment 
have  performed  such  a  feat.  She  nodded  and  coughed  and 
fidgeted  in  vain ! 

The  vicar's  confidences  were  the  result  of  a  fit  of  nervous 


32  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

exasperation.  Mrs.  Seatpn  had  just  embarked  upon  an  account 
of  '  our  charming  time  with  Lord  Fleckwood.'  Now  Lord  Fleck- 
wood  was  a  distant  cousin  of  Archdeacon  Seaton,  and  the  great 
magnate  of  the  neighbourhood,  not,  however,  a  very  respectable 
magnate.  Mr.  Thornburgh  had  heard  accounts  of  Lupton 
Castle  from  Mrs.  Seaton  on  at  least  half  a  dozen  different 
occasions.  Privately  he  believed  them  all  to  refer  to  one 
visit,  an  event  of  immemorial  antiquity  periodically  brought 
up  to  date  by  Mrs.  Seaton's  imagination.  But  the  vicar  was  a 
timid  man,  without  the  courage  of  his  opinions,  and  in  his 
eagerness  to  stop  the  flow  of  his  neighbour's  eloquence  he  could 
think  of  no  better  device,  or  more  suitable  rival  subject,  than 
to  plunge  into  the  story  of  the  drunken  carrier,  and  the  pastry 
still  reposing  on  the  counter  at  Kandall's. 

He  blushed,  good  man,  when  he  was  well  in  it.  His  wife's 
horrified  countenance  embarrassed  him.  But  anything  was 
better  than  Lord  Fleckwood.  Mrs.  Seaton  listened  to  him 
with  the  slightest  smile  on  her  formidable  Up.  The  story  was 
pleasing  to  her. 

'  At  least,  my  dear  sir,'  she  said  when  he  paused,  nodding  her 
diademed  head  with  stately  emphasis,  'Mrs.  Thornburgh's  in- 
convenience may  have  one  good  result.  You  can  now  make  an 
example  of  the  carrier.  It  is  our  special  business,  as  my  hus- 
band always  says,  who  are  in  authority,  to  bring  their  low 
vices  home  to  these  people.' 

The  vicar  fidgeted  in  his  chair.  What  ineptitude  had  he 
been  guilty  of  now  !  By  way  of  avoiding  Lord  Fleckwood  he 
might  have  started  Mrs.  Seaton  on  teetotalism.  Now  if  there 
was  one  topic  on  which  this  awe-inspiring  woman  was  more 
awe-inspiring  than  another  it  was  on  the  topic  of  teetotalism. 
The  vicar  had  already  felt  himself  a  criminal  as  he  drank  his 
modest  glass  of  claret  under  her  eye. 

'Oh,  the  drunkenness  about  here  is  pretty  bad,'  said  Dr. 
Baker,  from  the  other  end  of  the  table.  'But  there  are  plenty 
of  worse  things  in  these  valleys.  Besides,  what  person  in  his 
senses  would  think  of  trying  to  disestablish  John  Backhouse  ? 
He  and  his  queer  brother  are  as  much  a  feature  of  the  valley  as 
High  Fell.  We  have  too  few  originals  left  to  be  so  very  par- 
ticular about  trifles.' 

'  Trifles  1 '  repeated  Mrs.  Seaton  in  a  deep  voice,  throwing  up 
her  eyes.  But  she  would  not  venture  an  argument  with  Dr. 
Baker.  He  had  all  the  cheery  self-confidence  of  the  old  estab- 
lished local  doctor,  who  knows  himself  to  be  a  power,  and 
neither  Mrs.  Seaton  nor  her  restless  intriguing  little  husband 
had  ever  yet  succeeded  in  putting  him  down. 

'You  must  see  these  two  old  characters,'  said  Dr.  Baker  to 
Elsmere  across  the  table.  '  They  are  relics  of  a  Westmoreland 
which  will  soon  have  disappeared.  Old  John,  who  is  going  on 
for  seventy,  is  as  tough  an  old  dalesman  as  ever  you  saw.  He 
doesn't  measure  his  cups,  but  he  would  scorn  to  be  floored  by 


CHAP,  in  WESTMORELAND  33 

them.  I  don't  believe  he  does  drink  much,  but  if  he  does  there 
is  probably  no  amount  of  whisky  that  he  couldn't  carry.  Jim, 
the  other  brother,  is  about  five  years  older.  He  is  a  kind  of 
softie — all  alive  on  one  side  of  his  brain,  and  a  noodle  on  the 
other.  A  single  glass  of  rum  and  water  puts  him  under  the 
table.  And  as  he  never  can  refuse  this  glass,  and  as  the  temp- 
tation generally  seizes  him  when  they  are  on  their  rounds,  he  is 
always  getting  John  into  disgrace.  John  swears  at  him  and 
slangs  him.  No  use.  Jim  sits  still,  looks — well,  nohow.  I 
never  saw  an  old  creature  with  a  more  singular  gift  of  denud- 
ing his  face  of  all  expression.  John  vows  he  shall  go  to  the 
"  house  "  ;  he  has  no  legal  share  in  the  business  ;  the  house  and 
the  horse  and  cai't  are  John's.  Next  day  you  see  them  on  the 
cart  again  just  as  usual.  In  reality  neither  brother  can  do 
without  the  other.  And  three  days  after,  the  play  begins 
again.' 

'An  improving  spectacle  for  the  valley,'  said  Mrs.  Seaton 
drily. 

'Oh,  my  dear  madam,'  said  the  doctor,  shrugging  his 
shoulders,  '  we  can't  all  be  so  virtuous.  If  old  Jim  is  a 
drunkard,  he  has  got  a  heart  of  his  own  somewhere,  and  can 
nurse  a  dying  niece  like  a  woman.  Miss  Leyburn  can  tell  us 
something  about  that.' 

And  he  turned  round  to  his  neighbour  with  a  complete 
change  of  expression,  and  a  voice  that  had  a  new  note  in  it 
of  affectionate  respect.  Catherine  coloured  as  if  she  did  not 
like  being  addressed  on  the  subject,  and  just  nodded  a  little 
with  gentle  affirmative  eyes. 

'  A  strange  case,'  said  Dr.  Baker,  again  looking  at  Elsmere. 
'  It  is  a  family  that  is  original  and  old-world  even  in  its  ways  of 
dying.  I  have  been  a  doctor  in  these  parts  for  five-and-twenty 
years.  I  have  seen  what  you  may  call  old  Westmoreland  die 
out — costume,  dialect,  superstitions.  At  least,  as  to  dialect,  the 
people  have  become  bi-lingual.  I  sometimes  think  they  talk  it 
to  each  other  as  much  as  ever,  but  some  of  them  won't  talk  it 
to  you  and  me  at  all.  And  as  to  superstitions,  the  only  ghost 
story  I  know  that  still  has  some  hold  on  popular  belief  is  the 
one  which  attaches  to  this  mountain  here,  High  Fell,  at  the  end 
of  this  valley.' 

He  paused  a  moment.  A  salutary  sense  has  begun  to  pene- 
trate even  modern  provincial  society,  that  no  man  may  tell  a 
ghost  story  without  leave.  Rose  threw  a  merry  glance  at  him. 
They  two  were  very  old  friends.  Dr.  Baker  had  pulled  out  her 
first  teeth  and  given  her  a  sixpence  afterwards  for  each  opera- 
tion. The  pull  was  soon  forgotten  ;  the  sixpence  lived  on  grate- 
fully in  a  child's  warm  memory. 

'Tell  it,'  she  said  ;  'we  give  you  leave.  We  won't  interrupt 
you  unless  you  put  in  too  many  inventions.' 

'  You  invite  me  to  break  the  first  law  of  story-telling,  Miss 
Rose,'  said  the  doctor,  lifting  a  finger  at  her.  'Every  man  is 

P 


34  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

bound  to  leave  a  story  better  than  he  found  it.  However,  I 
couldn't  tell  it  if  I  would.  I  don't  know  what  makes  the  poor 
ghost  walk  ;  and  if  you  do,  I  shall  say  you  invent.  But  at  any 
rate  there  is  a  ghost,  and  she  walks  along  the  side  of  High  Fell 
at  midnight  every  Midsummer  day.  If  you  see  her  and  she 
passes  you  in  silence,  why  you  only  get  a  fright  for  your  pains. 
But  if  she  speaks  to  you,  you  die  within  the  year.  Old  John 
Backhouse  is  a  widower  with  one  daughter.  This  girl  saw  the 

thpst  last  Midsummer  day,  and  Miss  Leyburn  and  I  are  now 
oing  our  best  to  keep  her  alive  over  the  next ;  but  with  very 
small  prospect  of  success.' 

'What  is  the  girl  dying  of? — fright?'  asked  Mrs.  Seaton 
harshly. 

'  Oh  no  ! '  said  the  doctor  hastily, '  not  precisely.  A  sad  story  ; 
better  not  inquire  into  it.  But  at  the  present  moment  the  time 
of  her  death  seems  likely  to  be  determined  by  the  strength  of 
her  own  and  other  people's  belief  in  the  ghost's  summons.' 

Mrs.  Seaton's  grim  mouth  relaxed  into  an  ungenial  smile. 
She  put  up  her  eye-glass  and  looked  at  Catherine.  'An  un- 
pleasant household,  I  should  imagine,'  she  said  shortly,  'for  a 
young  lady  to  visit.' 

Doctor  Baker  looked  at  the  rector's  wife,  and  a  kind  of  flame 
came  into  his  eyes.  He  and  Mrs.  Seaton  were  old  enemies,  and 
he  was  a  quick-tempered  mercurial  sort  of  man. 

'  I  presume  that  one's  guardian  angel  may  have  to  follow  one 
sometimes  into  unpleasant  quarters,'  he  said  hotly.  '  If  this  girl 
lives,  it  will  be  Miss  Leyburn's  doing ;  if  she  dies,  saved  and 
comforted,  instead  of  lost  in  this  world  and  the  next,  it  will  be 
Miss  Leyburn's  doing  too.  Ah,  my  dear  young  lady,  let  me 
alone  !  You  tie  my  tongue  always,  and  I  won't  have  it.' 

And  the  doctor  turned  his  weather-beaten  elderly  face  upon 
her  with  a  look  which  was  half  defiance  and  half  apology.  She, 
on  her  side,  had  flushed  painfully,  laying  her  white  finger-tips 
imploringly  on  his  arm.  Mrs.  Seaton  turned  away  with  a  little 
dry  cough,  so  did  her  spectacled  sister  at  the  other  end  of  the 
table.  Mrs.  Leyburn,  on  the  other  hand,  sat  in  a  little  ecstasy, 
looking  at  Catherine  and  Dr.  Baker,  something  glistening  in  her 
eyes.  Robert  Elsmere  alone  showed  presence  of  mind.  Bending 
across  to  Dr.  Baker,  he  asked  him  a  sudden  question  as  to  the 
history  of  a  certain  strange  green  mound  or  barrow  that  rose 
out  of  a  flat  field  not  far  from  the  vicarage  windows.  Dr.  Baker 
grasped  his  whiskers,  threw  the  young  man  a  queer  glance,  and 
replied.  Thenceforward  he  and  Robert  kept  up  a  lively  anti- 
quarian talk  on  the  traces  of  Norse  settlement  in  the  Cumbrian 
valleys,  which  lasted  till  the  ladies  left  the  dining-room. 

As  Catherine  Leyburn  went  out  Elsmere  stood  holding  the 
door  open.  She  could  not  help  raising  her  eyes  upon  him,  eyes 
full  of  a  half -timid,  half -grateful  friendliness.  His  own  returned 
her  look  with  interest. 

'  "A  spirit,  but  a  woman  too,"'  he  thought  to  himself  with  a 


CHAP,  in  WESTMORELAND  85 

new-born  thrill  of  sympathy,  as  he  went  back  to  his  seat.  She 
had  not  yet  said  a  direct  word  to  him,  and  yet  he  was  curiously 
convinced  that  here  was  one  of  the  most  interesting  persons,  and 
one  of  the  persons  most  interesting  to  him,  that  he  had  ever 
met.  What  mingled  delicacy  and  strength  in  the  hand  that  had 
lain  beside  her  on  the  dinner-table — what  potential  depths  of 
feeling  in  the  full  dark-fringed  eye  ! 

Half  an  hour  later,  when  Elsmere  re-entered  the  drawing- 
room,  he  found  Catherine  Leyburn  sitting  by  an  open  French 
window  that  looked  out  on  the  lawn,  and  on  the  dim  rocky  face 
of  the  fell.  Adeline  Baker,  a  stooping  red-armed  maiden,  with 
a  pretty  face,  set  off',  as  she  imagined,  by  a  vast  amount  of  cheap 
finery,  was  sitting  beside  her,  studying  her  with  a  timid  adora- 
tion. The  doctor's  daughter  regarded  Catherine  Leyburn,  who 
during  the  last  five  years  had  made  herself  almost  as  distinct  a 
figure  in  the  popular  imagination  of  a  few  Westmoreland  valleys 
as  Sister  Dora  among  her  Walsall  miners,  as  a  being  of  a  totally 
different  order  from  herself.  She  was  glued  to  the  side  of  her 
idol,  but  her  shy  and  awkward  tongue  could  find  hardly  any- 
thing to  say  to  her.  Catherine,  however,  talked  away,  gently 
stroking  the  while  the  girl's  rough  hand  which  lay  on  her  knee, 
to  the  mingled  pain  and  bliss  of  its  owner,  who  was  outraged  by 
the  contrast  between  her  own  ungainly  member  and  Miss  Ley- 
burn's  delicate  fingers. 

Mrs.  Seaton  was  on  the  sofa  beside  Mrs.  Thornburgh,  amply 
avenging  herself  on  the  vicar's  wife  for  any  checks  she  might 
have  received  at  tea.  Miss  Barks,  her  sister,  an  old  maid  with 
a  face  that  seemed  to  be  perpetually  peering  forward,  light 
colourless  hair  surmounted  by  a  cap  adorned  with  artificial 
nasturtiums,  and  white-lashed  eyes  armed  with  spectacles,  was 
having  her  way  with  Mrs.  Leyburn,  inquiring  into  the  house- 
hold arrangements  of  Burwood  with  a  cross-examining  power 
which  made  the  mild  widow  as  pulp  before  her. 

When  the  gentlemen  entered,  Mrs.  Thornburgh  looked  round 
hastily.  She  herself  had  opened  that  door  into  the  garden.  A 
garden  on  a  warm  summer  night  offers  opportunities  no  schemer 
should  neglect.  Agnes  and  Rose  were  chattering  and  laughing 
on  the  gravel  path  just  outside  it,  their  white  girlish  figures 
showing  temptingly  against  the  dusky  background  of  garden 
and  fell.  It  somewhat  disappointed  the  vicar  s  wife  to  see  her 
tall  guest  take  a  chair  and  draw  it  beside  Catherine — while 
Adeline  Baker  awkwardly  got  up  and  disappeared  into  the 
garden. 

Elsmere  felt  it  an  unusually  interesting  moment,  so  strong 
had  been  his  sense  of  attraction  at  tea ;  but  like  the  rest  of  us 
he  could  find  nothing  more  telling  to  start  with  than  a  remark 
about  the  weather.  Catherine  in  her  reply  asked  him  if  he  were 
quite  recovered  from  the  attack  of  low  fever  he  was  understood 
to  have  been  suffering  from. 

'  Oh  yes,'  he  said  brightly,  '  I  am  very  nearly  as  fit  as  I  ever 


36  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  I 

was,  and  more  eager  than  I  ever  was  to  get  to  work.  The  idling 
of  it  is  the  worst  part  of  illness.  However,  in  a  month  from 
now  I  must  be  at  my  living,  and  I  can  only  hope  it  will  give  me 
enough  to  do.' 

Catherine  looked  up  at  him  with  a  quick  impulse  of  liking. 
What  an  eager  face  it  was !  Eagerness,  indeed,  seemed  to  be 
the  note  of  the  whole  man^  of  the  quick  eyes  and  mouth2  the 
flexible  hands  and  energetic  movements.  Even  the  straight, 
stubbly  hair,  its  owner's  passing  torment,  standing  up  round 
the  high  open  brow,  seemed  to  help  the  general  impression  of 
alertness  and  vigour. 

'  Your  mother,  I  hear,  is  already  there  ? '  said  Catherine. 

'  Yes.  My  poor  mother  ! '  and  the  young  man  smiled  half 
sadly.  'It  is  a  curious  situation  for  both  of  us.  This  living 
which  has  just  been  bestowed  on  me  is  my  father's  old  living. 
It  is  in  the  gift  of  my  cousin,  Sir  Mowbray  Elsmere.  My  great- 
uncle  ' — he  drew  himself  together  suddenly.  '  But  I  don't  know 
why  I  should  imagine  that  these  things  interest  other  people,' 
he  said,  with  a  little  quick,  almost  comical,  accent  of  self- 
rebuke. 

'  Please  go  on,'  cried  Catherine  hastily.  The  voice  and  manner 
were  singularly  pleasant  to  her ;  she  wished  he  would  not  inter- 
rupt himself  for  nothing. 

'  Really  1  Well  then,  my  great-uncle,  old  Sir  William,  wished 
me  to  have  it  when  I  grew  up.  I  was  against  it  for  a  long  time, 
took  orders  j  but  I  wanted  something  more  stirring  than  a 
country  parish.  One  has  dreams  of  many  things.  But  one's 
dreams  come  to  nothing.  I  got  ill  at  Oxford.  The  doctors  for- 
bade the  town  work.  The  old  incumbent  who  had  held  the 
living  since  my  father's  death  died  precisely  at  that  moment. 
I  felt  myself  booked,  and  gave  in  to  various  friends ;  but  it  is 
second  best.' 

She  felt  a  certain  soreness  and  discomfort  in  his  tone,  as 
though  his  talk  represented  a  good  deal  of  mental  struggle  in 
the  past. 

'But  the  country  is  not  idleness,'  she  said,  smiling  at  him. 
Her  cheek  was  leaning  lightly  on  her  hand,  her  eyes  had  an 
unusual  animation ;  and  her  long  white  dress,  guiltless  of  any 
ornament  save  a  small  old-fashioned  locket  hanging  from  a  thin 
old  chain  and  a  pair  of  hair  bracelets  with  engraved  gold  clasps, 
gave  her  the  nobleness  and  simplicity  of  a  Romney  picture. 

'  You  do  not  find  it  so,  I  imagine,'  he  replied,  bendmg  forward 
to  her  with  a  charming  gesture  of  homage.  He  would  have 
liked  her  to  talk  to  him  of  her  work  and  her  interests.  He,  too, 
mentally  compared  her  to  Saint  Elizabeth.  He  could  almost 
have  fancied  the  dark  red  flowers  in  her  white  lap.  But  his 
comparison  had  another  basis  of  feeling  than  Rose's. 

However,  she  would  not  talk  to  him  of  herself.  The  way  in 
which  she  turned  the  conversation  brought  home  to  his  own 
expansive  confiding  nature  a  certain  austerity  and  stiffness  of 


CHAP,  in  WESTMORELAND  37 

fibre  in  her  which  for  the  moment  chilled  him.  But  as  he  got 
her  into  talk  about  the  neighbourhood,  the  people  and  their 
ways,  the  impression  vanished  again,  so  far  at  least  as  there  was 
anything  repellent  about  it.  Austerity,  strength,  individuality, 
all  these  words  indeed  he  was  more  and  more  driven  to  apply  to 
her.  She  was  like  no  other  woman  he  had  ever  seen.  It  was 
not  at  all  that  she  was  more  remarkable  intellectually.  Every 
now  and  then,  indeed,  as  their  talk  flowed  on,  he  noticed  in 
what  she  said  an  absence  of  a  good  many  interests  and  attain- 
ments which  in  his  ordinary  south-country  women  friends  he 
would  have  assumed  as  a  matter  of  course. 

'  I  understand  French  very  little,  and  I  never  read  any,'  she 
said  to  him  once,  quietly,  as  he  fell  to  comparing  some  peasant 
story  she  had  told  him  with  an  episode  in  one  of  George  Sand's 
Berry  novels.  It  seemed  to  him  that  she  knew  her  Wordsworth 
by  heart.  And  her  own  mountain  life,  her  own  rich  and  medi- 
tative soul,  had  taught  her  judgments  and  comments  on  her 
favourite  poet  which  stirred  Elsmere  every  now  and  then  to 
enthusiasm — so  true  they  were  and  pregnant,  so  full  often  of  a 
natural  magic  of  expression.  On  the  other  hand,  when  he 
quoted  a  very  well-known  line  of  Shelley's  she  asked  him  where 
it  came  from.  She  seemed  to  him  deeper  and  simpler  at  every 
moment ;  her  very  limitations  of  sympathy  and  knowledge,  and 
they  were  evidently  many,  began  to  attract  him.  The  thought 
of  her  ancestry  crossed  him  now  and  then,  rousing  in  him  now 
wonder,  and  now  a  strange  sense  of  congruity  and  harmony. 
Clearly  she  was  the  daughter  of  a  primitive  unexhausted  race. 
And  yet  what  purity,  what  refinement,  what  delicate  perception 
and  self-restraint ! 

Presently  they  fell  on  the  subject  of  Oxford. 

'  Were  you  ever  there  ? '  he  asked  her. 

'  Once,'  she  said.  '  I  went  with  my  father  one  summer  term. 
I  have  only  a  confused  memory  of  it — of  the  quadrangles,  and  a 
long  street,  a  great  building  with  a  dome,  and  such  beautiful 
trees ! ' 

'  Did  your  father  often  go  back  ? ' 

'  No  ;  never  towards  the  latter  part  of  his  life ' — and  her  clear 
eyes  clouded  a  little  ;  '  nothing  made  him  so  sad  as  the  thought 
of  Oxford.' 

She  paused,  as  though  she  had  strayed  on  to  a  topic  where 
expression  was  a  little  difficult.  Then  his  face  and  clerical  dress 
seemed  somehow  to  reassure  her,  and  she  began  again,  thougli 
reluctantly. 

'  He  used  to  say  that  it  was  all  so  changed.  The  young  fel- 
lows he  saw  when  he  went  back  scorned  everything  he  cared 
for.  Every  visit  to  Oxford  was  like  a  stab  to  him.  It  seemed 
to  him  as  if  the  place  was  full  of  men  who  only  wanted  to 
destroy  and  break  down  everything  that  was  sacred  to  him.' 

Elsmere  reflected  that  Richard  Ley  burn  must  have  left  Oxford 
about  the  beginning  of  the  Liberal  reaction,  which  followed 


38  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  I 

Tractarianism,  and  in  twenty  years  transformed  the  Uni- 
versity. 

'  Ah ! '  he  said,  smiling  gently.  '  He  should  have  lived  a 
little  longer.  There  is  another  turn  of  the  tide  since  then. 
The  destructive  wave  has  spent  itself,  and  at  Oxford  now 
many  of  us  feel  ourselves  on  the  upward  swell  of  a  religious 
revival.' 

Catherine  looked  up  at  him  with  a  sweet  sympathetic  look. 
That  dim  vision  of  Oxford,  with  its  gray,  tree-lined  walls,  lay 
very  near  to  her  heart  for  her  father's  sake.  And  the  keen  face 
above  her  seemed  to  satisfy  and  respond  to  her  inner  feeling. 

'  I  know  the  High  Church  influence  is  very  strong,'  she  said, 
hesitating  ;  '  but  I  don't  know  whether  father  would  have  liked 
that  much  better.' 

The  last  words  had  slipped  out  of  her,  and  she  checked  herself 
suddenly.  Robert  saw  that  she  was  uncertain  as  to  his  opinions, 
and  afraid  lest  she  might  have  said  something  discourteous. 

'  It  is  not  only  the  High  Church  influence,'  he  said  quickly, 
'  it  is  a  mixture  of  influences  from  all  sorts  of  quarters  that  has 
brought  about  the  new  state  of  things.  Some  of  the  factors  in 
the  change  were  hardly  Christian  at  all,  by  name,  but  they  have 
all  helped  to  make  men  think,  to  stir  their  hearts,  to  win  them 
back  to  the  old  ways.' 

His  voice  had  taken  to  itself  a  singular  magnetism.  Evidently 
the  matters  they  were  discussing  were  matters  in  which  he  felt 
a  deep  and  loving  interest.  His  young  boyish  face  had  grown 
grave  ;  there  was  a  striking  dignity  and  weight  in  his  look  and 
manner,  which  suddenly  roused  in  Catherine  the  sense  that  she 
was  speaking  to  a  man  of  distinction,  accustomed  to  deal  on 
equal  terms  with  the  large  things  of  life.  She  raised  her  eyes 
to  him  for  a  moment,  and  he  saw  in  them  a  beautiful,  mystical 
light — responsive,  lofty,  full  of  soul. 

The  next  moment,  it  apparently  struck  her  sharply  that  their 
conversation  was  becoming  incongruous  with  its  surroundings. 
Behind  them  Mrs.  Thornburgh  was  bustling  about  with  candles 
and  music-stools,  preparing  for  a  performance  on  the  flute  by 
Mr.  Mayhew,  the  black-browed  vicar  of  Shanmoor,  and  the  room 
seemed  to  be  pervaded  by  Mrs.  Seaton's  strident  voice.  Her 
strong  natural  reserve  asserted  itself,  and  her  face  settled  again 
into  the  slight  rigidity  of  expression  characteristic  of  it.  She 
rose  and  prepared  to  move  farther  into  the  room. 

'  We  must  listen,'  she  said  to  him,  smiling,  over  her  shoulder. 

And  she  left  him,  settling  herself  by  the  side  of  Mrs.  Leyburn. 
He  had  a  momentary  sense  of  rebuff.  The  man,  quick,  sensitive, 
sympathetic,  felt  in  the  woman  the  presence  of  a  strength,  a 
self-suflicingness  which  was  not  all  attractive.  His  vanity,  if  he 
had  cherished  any  during  their  conversation,  was  not  flattered 
by  its  close.  But  as  he  leant  against  the  window-frame  waiting 
for  the  music  to  begin,  he  could  hardly  keep  his  eyes  from  her. 
He  was  a  man  who,  by  force  of  temperament,  made  friends 


CHAP,  in  WESTMORELAND  39 

readily  with  women,  though  except  for  a  passing  fancy  or  two 
he  had  never  been  in  love ;  and  his  sense  of  difficulty  with 
regard  to  this  stiffly-mannered,  deep-eyed  country  girl  brought 
with  it  an  unusual  stimulus  and  excitement. 

Miss  Barks  seated  herself  deliberately,  after  much  fiddling 
with  bracelets  and  gloves,  and  tied  back  the  ends  of  her  cap 
behind  her.  Mr.  Mayhew  took  out  his  flute  and  lovingly  put  it 
together.  He  was  a  powerful  swarthy  man,  who  said  little  and 
was  generally  alarming  to  the  ladies  of  the  neighbourhood.  To 
propitiate  him,  they  asked  him  to  bring  his  flute,  and  nervously 
praised  the  fierce  music  he  made  on  it.  Miss  Barks  enjoyed  a 
monopoly  of  his  accompaniments,  and  there  were  many  who 
regarded  her  assiduity  as  a  covert  attack  upon  the  widower's 
name  and  position.  If  so,  it  was  Greek  meeting  Greek,  for  with 
all  his  taciturnity  the  vicar  of  Shanmoor  was  well  able  to  defend 
himself. 

'  Has  it  begun  ? '  said  a  hurried  whisper  at  Elsmere's  elbow,  and 
turning  he  saw  Rose  and  Agnes  on  the  step  of  the  window, 
Rose's  cheeks  flushed  by  the  night  breeze,  a  shawl  thrown  lightly 
round  her  head. 

She  was  answered  by  the  first  notes  of  the  flute,  following 
some  powerful  chords  in  which  Miss  Barks  had  tested  at  once 
the  strength  of  her  wrists  and  the  vicarage  piano. 

The  girl  made  a  little  moue  of  disgust,  and  turned  as  though 
to  fly  down  the  steps  again.  But  Agnes  caught  her  and  held 
her,  and  the  mutinous  creature  had  to  submit  to  be  drawn  inside 
while  Mrs.  Thornburgh,  in  obedience  to  complaints  of  draughts 
from  Mrs.  Seaton,  motioned  to  have  the  window  shut.  Rose 
established  herself  against  the  wall,  her  curly  head  thrown  back, 
her  eyes  half  shut,  her  mouth  expressing  an  angry  endurance. 
Robert  watched  her  with  amusement. 

It  was  certainly  a  remarkable  duet.  After  an  adagio  opening 
in  which  flute  and  piano  were  at  magnificent  cross  purposes 
from  the  beginning,  the  two  instruments  plunged  into  an  allegro 
very  long  and  very  fast,  which  became  ultimately  a  desperate 
race  between  the  competing  performers  for  the  final  chord.  Mr. 
Mayhew  toiled  away,  taxing  the  resources  of  his  whole  vast 
frame  to  keep  his  small  instrument  in  a  line  with  the  piano,  and 
taxing  them  in  vain.  For  the  shriller  and  the  wilder  grew  the 
flute,  and  the  greater  the  exertion  of  the  dark  Hercules  perform- 
ing on  it,  the  fiercer  grew  the  pace  of  the  piano.  Rose  stamped 
her  little  foot. 

'  Two  bars  ahead  last  page,'  she  murmured,  '  three  bars  this  : 
will  no  one  stop  her  ! ' 

But  the  pages  flew  past,  turned  assiduously  by  Agnes,  who 
took  a  sardonic  delight  in  these  performances,  and  every  counten- 
ance in  the  room  seemed  to  take  a  look  of  sharpened  anxiety  as 
to  how  the  duet  was  to  end,  and  who  was  to  be  victor. 

Nobody  knowing  Miss  Barks  need  to  have  been  in  any  doubt 
as  to  that !  Crash  came  the  last  chord,  and  the  poor  flute  nearly 


40  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

half  a  page  behind  was  left  shrilly  hanging  in  mid-air,  for- 
saken and  companionless,  an  object  of  derision  to  gods  and 
men. 

'  Ah  !  I  took  it  a  little  fast ! '  said  the  lady,  triumphantly 
looking  up  at  the  discomfited  clergyman. 

'  Mr.  Elsmere,'  said  Rose,  hiding  herself  in  the  window  curtain 
beside  him,  that  she  might  have  her  laugh  in  safety.  '  Do  they 
play  like  that  in  Oxford,  or  has  Long  Whindale  a  monopoly  ? ' 

But  before  he  could  answer,  Mrs.  Thornburgh  called  to  the 
girl— 

'  Eose  !  Rose  !    Don't  go  out  again  !    It  is  your  turn  next ! ' 

Rose  advanced  reluctantly,  her  head  in  air.  Robert,  remem- 
bering something  that  Mrs.  Thornburgh  had  said  to  him  as  to 
her  musical  power,  supposed  that  she  felt  it  an  indignity  to  be 
asked  to  play  in  such  company. 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  motioned  to  him  to  come  and  sit  by  Mrs. 
Leyburn,  a  summons  which  he  obeyed  with  the  more  alacrity, 
as  it  brought  him  once  more  within  reach  of  Mrs.  Leyburn's 
eldest  daughter. 

'  Are  you  fond  of  music,  Mr.  Elsmere  ? '  asked  Mrs.  Leyburn 
in  her  little  mincing  voice,  making  room  for  his  chair  beside 
them.  '  If  you  are,  I  am  sure  my  youngest  daughter's  playing 
will  please  you.' 

Catherine  moved  abruptly.  Robert,  while  he  made  some 
pleasant  answer,  divined  that  the  reserved  and  stately  daughter 
must  be  often  troubled  by  the  mother's  expansiveness. 

Meanwhile  the  room  was  again  settling  itself  to  listen.  Mrs. 
Seatpn  was  severely  turning  over  a  photograph  book.  In  her 
opinion  the  violin  was  an  unbecoming  instrument  for  young 
women.  Miss  Barks  sat  upright  with  the  studiously  neutral 
expression  which  befits  the  artist  asked  to  listen  to  a  rival. 
Mr.  Thornburgh  sat  pensive,  one  foot  drooped  over  the  other. 
He  was  very  fond  of  the  Leyburn  girls,  but  music  seemed  to 
him,  good  man,  one  of  the  least  comprehensible  of  human 
pleasures.  As  for  Rose,  she  had  at  last  arranged  herself  and 
her  accompanist  Agnes,  after  routing  out  from  her  music  a 
couple  of  Fantasie-Stiicke,  which  she  had  wickedly  chosen  as 
presenting  the  most  severely  classical  contrast  to  the  '  rubbish ' 
played  by  the  preceding  performers.  She  stood  with  her  lithe 
figure  in  its  old-fashioned  dress  thrown  out  against  the  black 
coats  of  a  group  of  gentlemen  beyond,  one  slim  arched  foot 
advanced,  the  ends  of  the  blue  sash  dangling,  the  hand  and 
arm,  beautifully  formed,  but  still  wanting  the  roundness  of 
womanhood,  raised  high  for  action,  the  lightly  poised  head 
thrown  back  with  an  air.  Robert  thought  her  a  bewitching, 
half -grown  thing,  overflowing  with  potentialities  of  future 
brilliance  and  empire. 

Her  music  astonished  him.  Where  had  a  little  provincial 
maiden  learned  to  play  with  this  intelligence,  this  force,  this 
delicate  command  or  her  instrument  ?  He  was  not  a  musician, 


CHAP,  in  WESTMORELAND  41 

and  therefore  could  not  gauge  her  exactly,  but  he  was  more  or 
less  familiar  with  music  and  its  standards,  as  all  people  become 
nowadays  who  live  in  a  highly  cultivated  society,  and  he  knew 
enough  at  any  rate  to  see  that  what  he  was  listening  to  was 
remarkable,  was  out  of  the  common  range.  Still  more  evident 
was  this,  when  from  the  humorous  piece  with  which  the  sisters 
*  -led  off — a  dance  of  clowns,  but  clowns  of  Arcady — they  slid  into 
a  delicate  rippling  chant  d'amour,  the  long  drawn  notes  of  the 
violin  rising  and  falling  on  the  piano  accompaniment  with  an 
exquisite  plaintiveness.  Where  did  a  Jillette,  unformed,  inex- 
perienced, win  the  secret  of  so  much  eloquence — only  from  the 
natural  dreams  of  a  girl's  heart  as  to  'the  lovers  waiting  in  the 
hidden  years '  ? 

But  when  the  music  ceased,  Elsmere,  after  a  hearty  clap  that 
set  the  room  applauding  likewise,  turned  not  to  the  musician 
but  the  figure  beside  Mrs.  Leyburn,  the  sister  who  had  sat 
listening  with  an  impassiveness,  a  sort  of  gentle  remoteness  of 
look,  which  had  piqued  his  curiosity.  The  mother  meanwhile 
was  drinking  in  the  compliments  of  Dr.  Baker. 

'  Excellent ! '  cried  Elsmere.  '  How  in  the  name  of  fortune, 
Miss  Leyburn,  if  I  may  ask,  has  your  sister  managed  to  get  on 
so  far  in  this  remote  place  ? ' 

'  She  goes  to  Manchester  every  year  to  some  relations  we 
have  there,'  said  Catherine  quietly ;  '  I  believe  she  has  been 
very  well  taught.' 

'  But  surely,'  he  said  warmly,  '  it  is  more  than  teaching — more 
even  than  talent — there  is  something  like  genius  in  it  ? ' 

She  did  not  answer  very  readily. 

'  I  don't  know,'  she  said  at  last.  '  Every  one  says  it  is  very 
good.' 

He  would  have  been  repelled  by  her  irresponsiveness  but  that 
her  last  words  had  in  them  a  note  of  lingering,  of  wistfulness, 
as  though  the  subject  were  connected  with  an  inner  debate  not 
yet  solved  which  troubled  her.  He  was  puzzled,  but  certainly 
not  repelled. 

Twenty  minutes  later  everybody  was  going.  The  Seatons 
went  first,  and  the  other  guests  lingered  awhile  afterwards  to 
enjoy  the  sense  of  freedom  left  by  their  departure.  But  at  last 
the  Mayhews,  father  and  son,  set  off  on  foot  to  walk  home  over 
the  moonlit  mountains ;  the  doctor  tucked  himself  and  his 
daughter  into  his  high  gig,  and  drove  off  with  a  sweeping 
ironical  bow  to  Rose,  who  had  stood  on  the  steps  teasing  him 
to  the  last ;  and  Robert  Elsmere  offered  to  escort  the  Miss 
Leyburns  and  their  mother  home. 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  was  left  protesting  to  the  vicar's  incredu- 
lous ears  that  never — never  as  long  as  she  lived — would  she 
have  Mrs.  Seaton  inside  her  doors  again. 

'  Her  manners — '  cried  the  vicar's  wife,  fuming — '  her  man- 
ners would  disgrace  a  Whinborough  shop-girl.  She  has  none — 
positively  none ! ' 


42  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  I 

Then  suddenly  her  round  comfortable  face  brightened  and 
broadened  out  into  a  beaming  smile — 

'  But,  after  all,  William,  say  what  you  will— and  you  always 
do  say  the  most  unpleasant  things  you  can  think  of — it  was  a 
great  success.  I  know  the  Ley  burns  enjoyed  it.  And  as  for 
Robert,  I  saw  him  looking — looking  at  that  little  minx  Rose 
while  she  was  playing  as  if  he  couldn't  take  his  eyes  off  her. 
What  a  picture  she  made,  to  be  sure  ! ' 

The  vicar,  who  had  been  standing  with  his  back  to  the  fire- 
place and  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  received  his  wife's  remarks 
first  of  all  with  lifted  eyebrows,  and  then  with  a  low  chuckle, 
half  scornful,  half  compassionate,  which  made  her  start  in  her 
chair. 

'Rose?'  he  said  impatiently.  'Rose,  my  dear,  where  were 
your  eyes  ? ' 

It  was  very  rarely  indeed  that  on  her  own  ground,  so  to  speak, 
the  vicar  ventured  to  take  the  whip-hand  of  her  like  this.  Mrs 
Thornburgh  looked  at  him  in  amazement. 

'  Do  you  mean  to  say,'  he  asked,  in  raised  tones,  '  that  you 
didn't  notice  that  from  the  moment  you  first  introduced  Robert 
to  Catherine  Leyburn,  he  had  practically  no  attention  for  any- 
body else  ? ' 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  gazed  at  him — her  memory  flew  back  over 
the  evening — and  her  impulsive  contradiction  died  on  her  lips. 
It  was  now  her  turn  to  ejaculate — 

'  Catherine  ! '  she  said  feebly.     '  Catherine  !  how  absurd  ! ' 

But  she  turned  and,  with  quickened  breath,  looked  out  of 
window  after  the  retreating  figures.  Mrs.  Thornburgh  went 
up  to  bed  that  night  an  inch  taller.  She  had  never  felt  herself 
more  exquisitely  indispensable,  more  of  a  personage. 


CHAPTER  IV 

BEFORE,  however,  we  go  on  to  chronicle  the  ultimate  success  or 
failure  of  Mrs.  Thornburgh  as  a  match-maker,  it  may  be  well  to 
inquire  a  little  more  closely  into  the  antecedents  of  the  man 
who  had  suddenly  roused  so  much  activity  in  her  contriving 
mind.  And,  indeed,  these  antecedents  are  important  to  us. 
For  the  interest  of  an  uncomplicated  story  will  entirely  depend 
upon  the  clearness  with  which  the  reader  may  have  grasped  the 
general  outlines  of  a  quick  soul's  development.  And  this  de- 
velopment had  already  made  considerable  progress  before  Mrs. 
Thornburgh  set  eyes  upon  her  husband's  cousin,  Robert  Elsmere. 
Robert  Elsmere,  then,  was  well  born  and  fairly  well  provided 
with  this  world's  goods  ;  up  to  a  certain  moderate  point,  indeed, 
a  favourite  of  fortune  in  all  respects.  His  father  belonged  to 
the  younger  line  of  an  old  Sussex  family,  and  owed  his  pleasant 
country  living  to  the  family  instincts  of  his  uncle,  Sir  William 


i  IIAI-.  TV  WESTMORELAND  48 

Elsmere,  in  whom  Whig  doctrines  and  Conservative  traditions 
were  pretty  evenly  mixed,  with  a  result  of  the  usual  respectable 
and  inconspicuous  kind.  His  virtues  had  descended  mostly  to 
his  daughters,  while  all  his  various  weaknesses  and  fatuities 
had  blossomed  into  vices  in  the  person  of  his  eldest  son  and 
heir,  the  Sir  Mowbray  Elsmere  of  Mrs.  Seaton's  early  recollec- 
tions. 

Edward  Elsmere,  rector  of  Murewell  in  Surrey,  and  father  of 
Robert,  had  died  before  his  uncle  and  patron ;  and  his  widow 
and  son  had  been  left  to  face  the  world  together.  Sir  William 
Elsmere  and  his  nephew's  wife  had  not  much  in  common,  and 
rarely  concerned  themselves  with  each  other.  Mrs.  Elsmere 
was  an  Irishwoman  by  birth,  with  irregular  Irish  ways,  and  a 
passion  for  strange  garments,  which  made  her  the  dread,  of  the 
conventional  English  squire ;  and,  after  she  left  the  vicarage 
with  her  son,  she  and  her  husband's  uncle  met  no  more.  But 
when  he  died  it  was  found  that  the  old  man's  sense  of  kinship, 
acting  blindly  and  irrationally,  but  with  a  slow  inevitableness 
and  certainty,  had  stirred  in  him  at  the  last  in  behalf  of  his 
great -nephew.  He  left  him  a  money  legacy,  the  interest  of 
which  was  to  be  administered  by  his  mother  till  his  majority, 
and  in  a  letter  addressed  to  his  heir  he  directed  that,  should  the 
boy  on  attaining  manhood  show  any  disposition  to  enter  the 
Church,  all  possible  steps  were  to  be  taken  to  endow  him  with 
the  family  living  of  Murewell,  which  had  been  his  father's,  and 
which  at  the  time  of  the  old  Baronet's  death  was  occupied  by 
another  connection  of  the  family,  already  well  stricken  in  years. 

Mowbray  Elsmere  had  been  hardly  on  speaking  terms  with 
his  cousin  Edward,  and  was  neither  amiable  nor  generous,  but 
his  father  knew  that  the  tenacious  Elsmere  instinct  was  to  be 
depended  on  for  the  fulfilment  of  his  wishes.  And  so  it  proved. 
No  sooner  was  his  father  dead  than  Sir  Mowbray  curtly  com- 
municated his  instructions  to  Mrs.  Elsmere,  then  living  at  the 
town  of  Harden  for  the  sake  of  the  great  public  school  recently 
transported  there.  She  was  to  inform  him,  when  the  right 
moment  arrived,  if  it  was  the  boy's  wish  to  enter  the  Church, 
and  meanwhile  he  referred  her  to  his  lawyers  for  particulars  of 
such  immediate  benefits  as  were  secured  to  her  under  the  late 
Baronet's  will. 

At  the  moment  when  Sir  Mowbray's  letter  reached  her,  Mrs. 
Elsmere  was  playing  a  leading  part  in  the  small  society  to  which 
circumstances  had  consigned  her.  She  was  the  personal  friend 
of  half  the  masters  and  their  wives,  and  of  at  least  a  quarter  of 
the  school,  while  in  the  little  town  which  stretched  up  the  hUl 
covered  by  the  new  school  buildings,  she  was  the  helper,  gossip, 
and  confidante  of  half  the  parish.  Her  vast  hats,  strange  in 
fashion  and  inordinate  in  brim,  her  shawls  of  many  colours, 
hitched  now  to  this  side  now  to  that,  her  swaying  gait  and 
looped-up  skirts,  her  spectacles,  and  the  dangling  parcels  in 
which  her  soul  delighted,  were  the  outward  signs  of  a  per- 


44  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

sonality  familiar  to  all.  For  under  those  checked  shawls  which 
few  women  passed  without  an  inward  marvel,  there  beat  one  of 
the  warmest  hearts  that  ever  animated  mortal  clay,  and  the 
prematurely  wrinkled  face,  with  its  small  quick  eyes  and 
shrewd  indulgent  mouth,  bespoke  a  nature  as  responsive  as  it 
was  vigorous. 

Their  owner  was  constantly  in  the  public  eye.  Her  house, 
during  the  hours  at  any  rate  in  which  her  boy  was  at  school, 
was  little  else  than  a  halting -place  between  two  journeys. 
Visits  to  the  poor,  long  watches  by  the  sick ;  committees,  in 
which  her  racy  breadth  of  character  gave  her  always  an 
important  place ;  discussions  with  the  vicar,  arguments  with 
the  curates,  a  chat  with  this  person  and  a  walk  with  that — these 
were  the  incidents  and  occupations  which  filled  her  day.  Life 
was  delightful  to  her ;  action,  energy,  influence,  were  delightful 
to  her ;  she  could  only  breathe  freely  in  the  very  thick  of  the 
stirring,  many-coloured  tumult  of  existence.  Whether  it  was  a 
pauper  in  the  workhouse,  or  boys  from  the  school,  or  a  girl 
caught  in  the  tangle  of  a  love-affair,  it  was  all  the  same  to  Mrs. 
Elsmere.  Everything  moved  her,  everything  appealed  to  her. 
Her  life  was  a  perpetual  giving  forth,  and  such  was  the  inherent 
nobility  and  soundness  of  the  nature,  that  in  spite  of  her  curious 
Irish  fondness  for  the  vehement  romantic  sides  of  experience, 
she  did  little  harm,  and  much  good.  Her  tongue  might  be 
over -ready  and  her  championships  indiscreet,  but  her  hands 
were  helpful,  and  her  heart  was  true.  There  was  something 
contagious  in  her  enjoyment  of  life,  and  with  all  her  strong 
religious  faith,  the  thought  of  death,  of  any  final  pause  and 
silence  in  the  whirr  of  the  great  social  machine,  was  to  her  a 
thought  of  greater  chill  and  horror  than  to  many  a  less  brave 
and  spiritual  soul. 

Till  her  boy  was  twelve  years  old,  however,  she  had  lived  for 
him  first  and  foremost.  She  had  taught  him,  played  with  him, 
learnt  with  him,  communicating  to  him  through  all  his  lessons 
her  own  fire  and  eagerness  to  a  degree  which  every  now  and 
then  taxed  the  physical  powers  of  the  child.  Whenever  the 
signs  of  strain  appeared,  however,  the  mother  would  be  over- 
taken by  a  fit  of  repentant  watchfulness,  and  for  days  together 
Robert  would  find  her  the  most  fascinating  playmate,  story- 
teller, and  romp,  and  forget  all  his  precocious  interest  in 
history  or  vulgar  fractions.  In  after  years  when  Robert  looked 
back  upon  his  childhood,  he  was  often  reminded  of  the  stories 
of  Goethe's  bringing -up.  He  could  recall  exactly  the  same 
scenes  as  Goethe  describes, — mother  and  child  sitting  together 
in  the  gloaming,  the  mother's  dark  eyes  dancing  with  fun  or 
kindling  with  dramatic  fire,  as  she  carried  an  imaginary  hero  or 
heroine  through  a  series  of  the  raciest  adventures  ;  the  child  all 
eagerness  and  sympathy,  now  clapping  his  little  hands  at  the 
fall  of  the  giantj  or  the  defeat  of  the  sorcerer,  and  now  arguing 
and  suggesting  in  ways  which  gave  perpetually  fresh  stimulus 


rinr.  iv  WESTMORELAND  45 

to  the  mother's  inventiveness.  He  could  see  her  dressing  up 
with  him  on  wet  days,  reciting  King  Henry  to  his  Prince  Hal, 
or  Prospero  to  his  Ariel,  or  simply  giving  free  vent  to  her  own 
exuberant  Irish  fun  till  both  he  and  she  would  sink  exhausted 
into  each  other's  arms,  and  end  the  evening  with  a  long  croon, 
sitting  curled  up  together  in  a  big  armchair  in  front  of  the  fire. 
He  could  see  himself  as  a  child  of  many  crazes,  eager  for  poetry 
one  week,  for  natural  history  the  next,  now  spending  all  his 
spare  time  in  strumming,  now  in  drawing,  and  now  forgetting 
everything  but  the  delights  of  tree-climbing  and  bird-nesting. 

And  through  it  all  he  had  the  quick  memory  of  his  mother's 
companionship,  he  could  recall  her  rueful  looks  whenever  the 
eager  inaccurate  ways,  in  which  he  reflected  certain  ineradicable 
tendencies  of  her  own,  had  lost  him  a  school  advantage;  he 
could  remember  her  exhortations,  with  the  dash  in  them  of 
humorous  self-reproach  which  made  them  so  stirring  to  the 
child's  affection ;  and  he  could  realise  their  old  far-off  life  at 
Murewell,  the  joys  and  the  worries  of  it,  and  see  her  now 
gossiping  with  the  village  folk,  now  wearing  herself  impetuously 
to  death  in  their  service,  and  now  roaming  with  him  over  the 
Surrey  heaths  in  search  of  all  the  dirty  delectable  things  in 
which  a  boy -naturalist  delights.  And  through  it  all  he  was 
conscious  of  the  same  vivid  energetic  creature,  disposing  with 
some  difficulty  and  fracas  of  its  own  excess  of  nervous  life. 

To  return,  however,  to  this  same  critical  moment  of  Sir 
Mowbray's  offer.  Robert  at  the  time  was  a  boy  of  sixteen, 
doing  very  well  at  school,  a  favourite  both  with  boys  and 
masters.  But  as  to  whether  his  development  would  lead  him  in 
the  direction  of  taking  orders,  his  mother  had  not  the  slightest 
idea.  She  was  not  herself  very  much  tempted  by  the  prospect. 
There  were  recollections  connected  with  Murewell,  and  with  the 
long  death  in  life  which  her  husband  had  passed  through  there, 
which  were  deeply  painful  to  her ;  and,  moreover,  her  sympathy 
with  the  clergy  as  a  class  was  by  no  means  sti'ong.  Her 
experience  had  not  been  large,  but  the  feeling  based  on  it 
promised  to  have  all  the  tenacity  of  a  favourite  prejudice. 
Fortune  had  handed  over  the  parish  of  Harden  to  a  ritualist 
vicar.  Mrs.  Elsmere's  inherited  Evangelicalism — she  came  from 
an  Ulster  county — rebelled  against  his  doctrine,  but  the  man 
himself  was  too  lovable  to  be  disliked.  Mrs.  Elsmere  knew  a 
hero  when  she  saw  him.  And  in  his  own  narrow  way,  the 
small -headed  emaciated  vicar  was  a  hero,  and  he  and  Mrs. 
Elsmere  had  soon  tasted  each  other's  quality,  and  formed  a 
curious  alliance,  founded  on  true  similarity  in  difference. 

But  the  criticism  thus  warded  off  the  vicar  expended  itself 
with  all  the  more  force  on  his  subordinates.  The  Harden 
curates  were  the  chief  crook  in  Mrs.  Elsmere's  otherwise  toler- 
able lot.  Her  parish  activities  brought  her  across  them 
perpetually,  and  she  could  not  away  with  them.  Their 
cassocks,  their  pretensions,  their  stupidities,  roused  the  Irish- 


46  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

woman's  sense  of  humour  at  every  turn.  The  individuals  came 
and  went,  but  the  type  it  seemed  to  her  was  always  the  same  ; 
and  she  made  their  peculiarities  the  basis  of  a  pessimist  theory 
as  to  the  future  of  the  English  Church,  which  was  a  source  of 
constant  amusement  to  the  very  broad-minded  young  men  who 
filled  up  the  school  staff.  She,  so  ready  in  general  to  see  all  the 
world's  good  points,  was  almost  blind  when  it  was  a  curate's 
virtues  which  were  in  question.  So  that,  in  spite  of  all  her 
persistent  church-going,  and  her  love  of  church  performances  as 
an  essential  part  of  the  busy  human  spectacle,  Mrs.  Elsmere 
had  no  yearning  for  a  clerical  son.  The  little  accidents  of  a 
personal  experience  had  led  to  wide  generalisations,  as  is  the 
way  with  us  mortals,  and  the  position  of  the  young  parson  in 
these  days  of  increased  parsonic  pretensions  was,  to  Mrs. 
Elsmere,  a  position  in  which  there  was  an  inherent  risk  of 
absurdity.  She  wished  her  son  to  impose  upon  her  when  it 
came  to  his  taking  any  serious  step  in  life.  She  asked  for 
nothing  better,  indeed,  than  to  be  able,  when  the  time  came,  to 
bow  the  motherly  knee  to  him  in  homage,  and  she  felt  a  little 
dread  lest,  in  her  flat  moments,  a  clerical  son  might  sometimes 
rouse  in  her  that  sharp  sense  of  the  ludicrous  which  is  the 
enemy  of  all  happy  illusions. 

Still,  of  course,  the  Elsmere  proposal  was  one  to  be  seriously 
considered  in  its  due  time  and  place.  Mrs.  Elsmere  only  re- 
flected that  it  would  certainly  be  better  to  say  nothing  of  it  to 
Robert  until  he  should  be  at  college.  His  impressionable  tem- 
perament, and  the  power  he  had  occasionally  shown  of  absorb- 
ing himself  in  a  subject  till  it  produced  in  him  a  fit  of  intense 
continuous  brooding,  unfavourable  to  health  and  nervous  energy, 
all  warned  her  not  to  supply  him,  at  a  period  of  rapid  mental 
and  bodily  growth,  with  any  fresh  stimulus  to  the  sense  of 
responsibility.  As  a  boy,  he  had  always  shown  himself  reli- 
giously susceptible  to  a  certain  extent,  and  his  mother's  religious 
Likes  and  dislikes  had  invariably  found  in  him  a  blind  and 
chivalrous  support.  He  was  content  to  be  with  her,  to  worship 
wj.th  her,  and  to  feel  that  no  reluctance  or  resistance  divided 
his  heart  from  hers.  But  there  had  been  nothing  specially  note- 
worthy or  precocious  about  his  religious  development,  and  at 
sixteen  or  seventeen,  in  spite  of  his  affectionate  compliance,  and 
his  natural  reverence  for  all  persons  and  beliefs  in  authority, 
his  mother  was  perfectly  aware  that  many  other  things  in  his 
life  were  more  real  to  him  than  religion.  And  on  this  point, 
at  any  rate,  she  was  certainly  not  the  person  to  force  him. 

He  was  such  a  schoolboy  as  a  discerning  master  delights  in 
— keen  about  everything,  bright,  docile,  popular,  excellent  at 
games.  He  was  in  the  sixth,  moreover,  as  soon  as  his  age 
allowed :  that  is  to  say,  as  soon  as  he  was  sixteen ;  and  his 
pride  in  everything  connected  with  the  great  body  in  which  he 
had  already  a  marked  and  important  place  was  unbounded. 
Very  early  in  his  school  career  the  literary  instincts,  which  had 


CHAP,  iv  WESTMORELAND  47 

always  been  present  in  him,  and  which  his  mother  had  largely 
helped  to  develop  by  her  own  restless  imaginative  ways  of 
approaching  life  and  the  world,  made  themselves  felt  with 
considerable  force.  Some  time  before  his  cousin's  letter  arrived, 
he  had  been  taken  with  a  craze  for  English  poetry,  and,  but  for 
the  corrective  influence  of  a  favourite  tutor  would  probably 
have  thrown  himself  into  it  with  the  same  exclusive  passion  as 
he  had  shown  for  subject  after  subject  in  his  eager  ebullient 
childhood.  His  mother  found  him  at  thirteen  inditing  a  letter 
on  the  subject  of  The  Faerie  Queene  to  a  school -friend,  in 
which,  with  a  sincerity  which  made  her  forgive  the  pomposity, 
he  remarked — 

'  I  can  truly  say  with  Pope,  that  this  great  work  has  afforded 
me  extraordinary  pleasure. 

And  about  the  same  time,  a  master  who  was  much  interested 
in  the  boy's  prospects  of  getting  the  school  prize  for  Latin  verse, 
a  subject  for  which  he  had  always  shown  a  special  aptitude, 
asked  him  anxiously,  after  an  Easter  holiday,  what  he  had  been 
reading ;  the  boy  ran  his  hands  through  his  hair,  and  still  keep- 
ing his  finger  between  the  leaves,  shut  a  book  before  him  from 
which  he  had  been  learning  by  heart,  and  which  was,  alas ! 
neither  Ovid  nor  Virgil. 

'  I  have  just  finished  Belial ! '  he  said,  with  a  sigh  of  satisfac- 
tion, '  and  am  beginning  Beelzebub.' 

A  craze  of  this  kind  was  naturally  followed  by  a  feverish 
period  of  juvenile  authorship,  when  the  house  was  littered  over 
with  stanzas  from  the  opening  canto  of  a  great  poem  on  Col- 
umbus, or  with  moral  essays  in  the  manner  of  Pope,  castigating 
the  vices  of  the  time  with  an  energy  which  sorely  tried  the 
gravity  of  the  mother  whenever  she  was  called  upon,  as  she 
invariably  was,  to  play  audience  to  the  young  poet.  At  the 
same  time  the  classics  absorbed  in  reality  their  full  share  of  this 
fast  developing  power.  Virgil  and  ./Eschylus  appealed  to  the 
same  fibres,  the  same  susceptibilities,  as  Milton  and  Shak- 
speare,  and  the  boy's  quick  imaginative  sense  appropriated 
Greek  and  Latin  life  with  the  same  ease  which  it  showed  in 
possessing  itself  of  that  bygone  English  life  whence  sprung  the 
Canterbury  Tales,  or  As  You  Like  It.  So  that  his  tutor,  who 
was  much  attached  to  him,  and  who  made  it  one  of  Ids  main 
objects  in  life  to  keep  the  boy's  aspiring  nose  to  the  grindstone 
of  grammatical  minutice,  began  about  the  time  of  Sir  Mowbray's 
letter  to  prophesy  very  smooth  things  indeed  to  his  mother  as 
to  his  future  success  at  college,  the  possibility  of  las  getting  the 
famous  St.  Anselm's  scholarship,  and  so  on. 

Evidently  such  a  youth  was  not  likely  to  depend  for  the 
attainment  of  a  foothold  in  life  on  a  piece  of  family  privilege. 
The  world  was  all  before  him  where  to  choose,  Mrs.  Elsmere 
thought  proudly  to  herself,  as  her  mother's  fancy  wandered 
rashly  through  the  coming  years.  And  for  many  reasons  she 
secretly  allowed  herself  to  hope  that  he  would  find  for  himself 


48  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

some  other  post  of  ministry  in  a  very  various  world  than  the 
vicarage  of  Murewell. 

So  she  wrote  a  civil  letter  of  acknowledgment  to  Sir  Mow- 
bray,  informing  him  that  the  intentions  of  his  great -uncle 
should  be  communicated  to  the  boy  when  he  should  be  of  fit 
age  to  consider  them,  and  that  meanwhile  she  was  obliged  to 
him  for  pointing  out  the  procedure  by  which  she  might  lay 
hands  on  the  legacy  bequeathed  to  her  in  trust  for  her  son,  the 
income  of  which  would  now  be  doubly  welcome  in  view  of  his 
college  expenses.  There  the  matter  rested,  and  Mrs.  Elsmere, 
during  the  two  years  which  followed,  thought  little  more  about 
it.  She  became  more  and  more  absorbed  in  her  boy's  immediate 
prospects,  in  the  care  of  his  health,  which  was  uneven  and  tried 
somewhat  by  the  strain  of  preparation  for  an  attempt  on  the 
St.  Anselm's  scholarship,  and  in  the  demands  which  his  ardent 
nature,  oppressed  with  the  weight  of  its  own  aspirations,  was 
constantly  making  upon  her  support  and  sympathy. 

At  last  the  moment  so  long  expected  arrived.  Mrs.  Elsmere 
and  her  son  left  Harden  amid  a  chorus  of  good  wishes,  and 
settled  themselves  early  in  November  in  Oxford  lodgings. 
Robert  was  to  have  a  few  days'  complete  holiday  before  the 
examination,  and  he  and  his  mother  spent  it  in  exploring  the 
beautiful  old  town,  now  shrouded  in  the  '  pensive  glooms '  of 
still,  gray  autumn  weather.  There  was  no  sun  to  light  up  the 
misty  reaches  of  the  river ;  the  trees  in  the  Broad  Walk  were 
almost  bare ;  the  Virginian  creeper  no  longer  shone  in  patches 
of  delicate  crimson  on  the  college  walls ;  the  gardens  were  damp 
and  forsaken.  But  to  Mrs.  Elsmere  and  Robert  the  place 
needed  neither  sun  nor  summer  'for  beauty's  heightening.' 
On  both  of  them  it  laid  its  old  irresistible  spell ;  the  sentiment 
haunting  its  quadrangles,  its  libraries,  and  its  dim  melodious 
chapels,  stole  into  the  lad's  heart  and  alternately  soothed 
and  stimulated  that  keen  individual  consciousness  which 
naturally  accompanies  the  first  entrance  into  manhood. 
Here,  on  this  soil,  steeped  in  memories,  his  problems,  his 
struggles  were  to  be  fought  out  in  their  turn.  'Take  up  thy 
manhood,'  said  the  inward  voice,  'and  show  what  is  in  thee. 
The  hour  and  the  opportunity  have  come  ! ' 

And  to  this  thrill  of  vague  expectation,  this  young  sense  of 
an  expanding  world,  something  of  pathos  and  of  sacredness  was 
added  by  the  dumb  influences  of  the  old  streets  and  weather- 
beaten  stones.  How  tenacious  they  were  of  the  past !  The 
dreaming  city  seemed  to  be  still  brooding  in  the  autumn  calm 
over  the  long  succession  of  her  sons.  The  continuity,  the  com- 
plexity of  human  experience ;  the  unremitting  effort  of  the 
race ;  the  stream  of  purpose  running  through  it  all ;  these  were 
the  kind  of  thoughts  which,  in  more  or  less  inchoate  and  frag- 
mentary shape,  pervaded  the  boy's  sensitive  mind  as  he  rambled 
with  his  mother  from  college  to  college. 

Mrs.  Elsmere,  too,  was  fascinated  by  Oxford.     But  for  all  her 


CHAP,  iv  WESTMORELAND  49 

eager  interest,  the  historic  beauty  of  the  place  aroused  in  her 
an  under-mood  of  melancholy,  just  as  it  did  in  Robert.  Both 
had  the  impressionable  Celtic  temperament,  and  both  felt  that 
a  critical  moment  was  upon  them,  and  that  the  Oxford  air  was 
charged  with  fate  for  each  of  them.  For  the  first  time  in  their 
lives  they  were  to  be  parted.  The  mother's  long  guardianship 
was  corning  to  an  end.  Had  she  loved  him  enough  1  Had  she 
so  far  fulfilled  the  trust  her  dead  husband  had  imposed  upon 
her  ?  Would  her  boy  love  her  in  the  new  life  as  he  had  loved 
her  in  the  old  1  And  could  her  poor  craving  heart  bear  to  see 
him  absorbed  by  fresh  intei-ests  and  passions,  in  which  her 
share  could  be  only,  at  the  best,  secondary  and  indirect  ? 

One  day — it  was  on  the  afternoon  preceding  the  examination 
—she  gave  hurried,  half-laughing  utterance  to  some  of  these 
misgivings  of  hers.  They  were  walking  down  the  Lime-walk 
of  Trinity  Gardens ;  beneath  their  feet  a  yellow  fresh-strewn 
carpet  of  leaves,  brown  interlacing  branches  overhead,  and  a 
red  misty  sun  shining  through  the  trunks.  Robert  understood 
his  mother  perfectly,  and  the  way  she  had  of  hiding  a  storm  of 
feeling  under  these  tremulous  comedy  airs.  So  that,  instead  of 
laughing  too,  he  took  her  hand  and,  there  being  no  spectators 
anywhere  to  be  seen  in  the  damp  November  garden,  he  raised 
it  to  his  lips  with  a  few  broken  words  of  affection  and  gratitude 
which  very  nearly  overcame  the  self-command  of  both  of  them. 
She  dashed  wildly  into  another  subject,  and  then  suddenly  it 
occurred  to  her  impulsive  mind  that  the  moment  had  come  to 
make  him  acquainted  with  those  dying  intentions  of  Ms  great- 
uncle  which  we  have  already  described.  The  diversion  was  a 
welcome  one,  and  the  duty  seemed  clear.  So,  accordingly,  she 
made  him  give  her  all  his  attention  while  she  told  him  the  story 
and  the  terms  of  Sir  Mowbray's  letter,  forcing  herself  the  while 
to  keep  her  own  opinions  and  predilections  as  much  as  possible 
out  of  sight. 

Robert  listened  with  interest  and  astonishment,  the  sense  of 
a  new-found  manhood  waxing  once  more  strong  within  him,  as 
his  mind  admitted  the  strange  picture  of  himself  occupying  the 
place  which  had  been  his  father's  ;  master  of  the  house  and  the 
parish  he  had  wandered  over  with  childish  steps,  clinging  to 
the  finger  or  the  coat  of  the  tall,  stooping  figure  which  occupied 
the  dim  background  of  his  recollections.  '  Poor  mother,'  he  said 
thoughtfully,  when  she  paused,  '  it  would  be  hard  upon  you  to 
go  back  to  Murewell ! ' 

'  Oh,  you  mustn't  think  of  me  when  the  time  comes,'  said  Mrs. 
Elsmere,  sighing.  '  I  shall  be  a  tiresome  old  woman,  and  you 
will  be  a  young  man  wanting  a  wife.  There,  put  it  out  of  your 
head,  Robert.  I  thought  I  had  better  tell  you,  for,  after  all, 
the  fact  may  concern  your  Oxford  life.  But  you've  got  a  long 
time  yet  before  you  need  begin  to  worry  about  it.' 

The  boy  drew  himself  up  to  his  full  height,  and  tossed  his 
tumbling  reddish  hair  back  from  his  eyes.  He  was  nearly  six 


50  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

feet  already,  with  a  long  thin  body  and  head,  which  amply 
justified  his  school  nickname  of  'the  darning-needle.' 

'  Don't  you  trouble  either,  mother,'  he  said,  with  a  tone  of 
decision  :  'I  don't  feel  as  if  I  should  ever  take  orders.' 

Mrs.  Elsmere  was  old  enough  to  know  what  importance  to 
attach  to  the  trenchancy  of  eighteen,  but  still  the  words  were 
pleasant  to  her. 

The  next  day  Robert  went  up  for  examination,  and  after 
three  days  of  hard  work,  and  phases  of  alternate  hope  and 
depression,  in  which  mother  and  son  excited  one  another  to  no 
useful  purpose,  there  came  the  anxious  crowding  round  the 
college  gate  in  the  November  twilight,  and  the  sudden  flight 
of  dispersing  messengers  bearing  the  news  over  Oxford.  The 
scholarship  had  been  won  by  a  precocious  Etonian  with  an 
extraordinary  talent  for  'stems/  and  all  that  appertaineth 
thereto.  But  the  exhibition  fell  to  Robert,  and  mother  and 
son  were  well  content. 

The  boy  was  eager  to  come  into  residence  at  once,  though 
he  would  matriculate  too  late  to  keep  the  term.  The  college 
authorities  were  willing,  and  on  the  Saturday  following  the 
announcement  of  his  success  he  was  matriculated,  saw  the 
Provost,  and  was  informed  that  rooms  would  be  found  for  him 
without  delay.  His  mother  and  he  gaily  climbed  innumerable 
stairs  to  inspect  the  garrets  of  which  he  was  soon  to  take  proud 
possession,  sallying  forth  from  them  only  to  enjoy  an  agitated 
delightful  afternoon  among  the  shops.  Expenditure,  always 
charming,  becomes  under  these  circumstances  a  sacred  and 
pontifical  act.  Never  had  Mrs.  Elsmere  bought  a  teapot  for 
herself  with  half  the  fervour  which  she  now  threw  into  the 
purchase  of  Robert's  ;  and  the  young  man,  accustomed  to  a 
rather  bare  home,  and  an  Irish  lack  of  the  little  elegancies  of 
life,  was  overwhelmed  when  his  mother  actually  dragged  him 
into  a  printseller's,  and  added  an  engraving  or  two  to  the 
enticing  miscellaneous  mass  of  which  he  was  already  master. 

They  only  just  left  themselves  time  to  rush  back  to  their 
lodgings  and  dress  for  the  solemn  function  of  a  dinner  with  the 
Provost.  The  dinner,  however,  was  a  great  success.  The  short, 
shy  manner  of  their  white-haired  host  thawed  under  the  influ- 
ence of  Mrs.  Elsmere's  racy,  unaffected  ways,  and  it  was  not 
long  before  everybody  in  the  room  had  more  or  less  made 
friends  with  her,  and  forgiven  her  her  marvellous  drab  poplin, 
adorned  with  fresh  pink  ruchings  for  the  occasion.  As  for  the 
Provost,  Mrs.  Elsmere  had  been  told  that  he  was  a  person  of 
whom  she  must  inevitably  stand  in  awe.  But  all  her  life  long 
she  -had  been  like  the  youth  in  the  fairy  tale  who  desired  to 
learn  how  to  shiver  and  could  not  attain  unto  it.  Fate  had 
denied  her  the  capacity  of  standing  in  awe  of  anybody,  and 
she  rushed  at  her  host  as  a  new  type,  delighting  in  the  thrill 
which  she  felt  creeping  over  her  when  she  found  herself  on 
the  arm  of  one  who  had  been  the  rallying-point  of  a  hundred 


CHAP,  v  WESTMORELAND  51 

straggles,  and  a  centre  of  influence  over  thousands  of  English 
lives. 

And  then  followed  the  proud  moment  when  Robert,  in  his 
exhibitioner's  gown,  took  her  to  service  in  the  chapel  on  Sun- 
day. The  scores  of  young  faces,  the  full  unison  of  the  hymns, 
and  finally  the  Provost's  sermon,  with  its  strange  brusqueries 
and  simplicities  of  manner  and  phrase — simplicities  so  sugges- 
tive, so  full  of  a  rich  and  yet  disciplined  experience,  that  they 
haunted  her  mind  for  weeks  afterwards — completed  the  general 
impression  made  upon  her  by  the  Oxford  life.  She  came  out, 
tremulous  and  shaken,  leaning  on  her  son's  arm.  She,  too,  like 
the  generations  before  her,  had  launched  her  venture  into  the 
deep.  Her  boy  was  putting  out  from  her  into  the  ocean  ;  hence- 
forth she  could  but  watch  him  from  the  shore.  Brought  into 
contact  with  this  imposing  University  organisation,  with  all  its 
suggestions  of  virile  energies  and  functions,  the  mother  suddenly 
felt  herself  insignificant  and  forsaken.  He  had  been  her  all, 
her  own,  and  now  on  this  training-ground  of  English  youth,  it 
seemed  to  her  that  the  great  human  society  had  claimed  him 
from  her. 


CHAPTER  V 

IN  his  Oxford  life  Robert  surrendered  himself  to  the  best  and 
most  stimulating  influences  of  the  place,  just  as  he  had  done  at 
school.  He  was  a  youth  of  many  friends,  by  virtue  of  a  natural 
gift  of  sympathy,  which  was  no  doubt  often  abused,  and  by  no 
means  invariably  profitable  to  its  owner,  but  wherein,  at  any 
rate,  his  power  over  his  fellows,  like  the  power  of  half  the  potent 
men  in  the  world's  history,  always  lay  rooted.  He  had  his 
mother's  delight  in  living.  He  loved  the  cricket-field,  he  loved 
the  river ;  his  athletic  instincts  and  his  athletic  friends  were 
always  fighting  in  him  with  his  literary  instincts  and  the  friends 
who  appealed  primarily  to  the  intellectual  and  moral  side  of 
him.  He  made  many  mistakes  alike  in  friends  and  in  pursuits  ; 
in  the  freshness  of  a  young  and  roving  curiosity  he  had  great 
difficulty  in  submitting  himself  to  the  intellectual  routine  of  the 
University,  a  difficulty  which  ultimately  cost  him  much  ;  but  at 
the  bottom  of  the  lad,  all  the  time,  there  was  a  strength  of  will, 
a  force  and  even  tyranny  of  conscience,  which  kept  his  charm 
and  pliancy  from  degenerating  into  weakness,  and  made  it  not 
only  delightful,  but  profitable  to  love  him.  He  knew  that  his 
mother  was  bound  up  in  him,  and  his  being  was  set  to  satisfy, 
so  far  as  he  could,  all  her  honourable  ambitions. 

His  many  undergraduate  friends,  strong  as  their  influence 
must  have  been  in  the  aggregate  on  a  nature  so  receptive,  hardly 
concern  us  here.  His  future  life,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  was  most 
noticeably  affected  by  two  men  older  than  himself,  and  belong- 


52  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

ing  to  the  dons — both  of  them  fellows  and  tutors  of  St.  Anselm's, 
though  on  different  planes  of  age. 

The  first  one,  Edward  Langham,  was  Robert's  tutor,  and 
about  seven  years  older  than  himself.  He  was  a  man  about 
whom,  on  entering  the  college,  Robert  heard  more  than  the 
usual  crop  of  stories.  The  healthy  young  English  barbarian 
has  an  aversion  to  the  intrusion  or  more  manner  into  life  than 
is  absolutely  necessary.  Now,  Langham  was  overburdened  with 
manner,  though  it  was  manner  of  the  deprecating  and  not  of 
the  arrogant  order.  Decisions,  it  seemed,  of  all  sorts  were 
abominable  to  him.  To  help  a  friend  he  had  once  consented 
to  be  Pro-proctor.  He  resigned  in  a  month,  and  none  of  his 
acquaintances  ever  afterwards  dared  to  allude  to  the  experi- 
ence. If  you  could  have  got  at  his  inmost  mind,  it  was  affirmed, 
the  persons  most  obnoxious  there  would  have  been  found  to  be 
the  scout,  who  intrusively  asked  him  every  morning  what  he 
would  have  for  breakfast,  and  the  college  cook,  who,  till  such  a 
course  was  strictly  forbidden  him,  mounted  to  his  room  at  half- 
past  nine  to  inquire  whether  he  would  '  dine  in.'  Being  a  scholar 
of  considerable  eminence,  it  pleased  him  to  assume  on  all  ques- 
tions an  exasperating  degree  of  ignorance ;  and  the  wags  01  the 
college  averred  that  when  asked  if  it  rained,  or  if  collections 
took  place  on  such  and  such  a  day,  it  was  pain  and  grief  to  him 
to  have  to  affirm  positively,  without  qualifications,  that  so  it 
was. 

Such  a  man  was  not  very  likely,  one  would  have  thought,  to 
captivate  an  ardent,  impulsive  boy  like  Elsmere.  Edward 
Langham,  however,  notwithstanding  undergraduate  tales,  was 
a  very  remarkable  person.  In  the  first  place,  he  was  possessed 
of  exceptional  personal  beauty.  His  colouring  was  vividly 
black  and  white,  closely  curling  jet-black  hair,  and  fine  black 
eyes  contrasting  with  a  pale,  clear  complexion  and  even,  white 
teeth.  So  far  he  had  the  characteristics  which  certain  Irishmen 
share  with  most  Spaniards.  But  the  Celtic  or  Iberian  brilliance 
was  balanced  by  a  classical  delicacy  and  precision  of  feature. 
He  had  the  brow,  the  nose,  the  upper  lip,  the  finely-moulded 
chin,  which  belong  to  the  more  severe  and  spiritual  Greek  type. 
Certainly  of  Greek  blitheness  and  directness  there  was  no  trace. 
The  eye  was  wavering  and  profoundly  melancholy  ;  all  the  move- 
ments of  the  tall,  finely-built  frame  were  hesitating  and  doubtful. 
It  was  as  though  the  man  were  suffering  from  paralysis  of  some 
moral  muscle  or  other  ;  as  if  some  of  the  normal  springs  of  action 
in  him  had  been  profoundly  and  permanently  weakened. 

He  had  a  curious  history.  He  was  the  only  child  of  a  doctor 
in  a  Lincolnshire  country  town.  His  old  parents  had  brought 
him  up  in  strict  provincial  ways,  ignoring  the  boy's  idiosyn- 
crasies as  much  as  possible.  They  did  not  want  an  exceptional 
and  abnormal  son,  and  they  tried  to  put  down  his  dreamy,  self- 
conscious  habits  by  forcing  him  into  the  common,  middle-class, 
Evangelical  groove.  As  soon  as  he  got  to  college,  however,  the 


CHAP,  v  WESTMORELAND  53 

brooding,  gifted  nature  had  a  moment  of  sudden  and,  as  it 
seemed  to  the  old  people  in  Gainsborough,  most  reprehensible  ex- 
pansion. Poems  were  sent  to  them,  cut  out  of  one  or  the  other 
of  the  leading  periodicals,  with  their  son's  initials  appended, 
and  articles  of  philosophical  art-criticism,  published  while  the 
boy  was  still  an  undergraduate — which  seemed  to  the  stern 
father  everything  that  was  sophistical  and  subversive.  For 
they  treated  Christianity  itself  as  an  open  question,  and  showed 
especially  scant  respect  for  the  '  Protestantism  of  the  Protestant 
religion.'  The  father  warned  him  grimly  that  he  was  not  going 
to  spend  his  hard-earned  savings  on  the  support  of  a  free- 
thinking  scribbler,  and  the  young  man  wrote  no  more  till  just 
after  he  had  taken  a  double  first  in  Greats.  Then  the  publica- 
tion of  an  article  in  one  of  the  leading  Reviews  on  '  The  Ideals 
of  Modern  Culture '  not  only  brought  him  a  furious  letter  from 
home  stopping  all  supplies,  but  also  lost  him  a  probable  fellow- 
ship. His  college  was  one  of  the  narrowest  and  most  backward 
in  Oxford,  and  it  was  made  perfectly  plain  to  him  before  the 
fellowship  examination  that  he  would  not  be  elected. 

He  left  the  college,  took  pupils  for  a  while,  then  stood  for  a 
vacant  fellowship  at  bt.  Anselm's,  the  Liberal  headquarters,  and 
got  it  with  flying  colours. 

Thenceforward  one  would  have  thought  that  a  brilliant  and 
favourable  mental  development  was  secured  to  him.  Not  at  all. 
The  moment  of  his  quarrel  with  his  father  and  his  college  had, 
in  fact,  represented  a  moment  of  energy,  of  comparative  success, 
which  never  recurred.  It  was  as  though  this  outburst  of  action 
and  liberty  had  disappointed  him,  as  if  some  deep-rooted  in- 
stinct— cold,  critical,  reflective— had  reasserted  itself,  condemn- 
ing him  and  his  censors  equally.  The  uselessness  of  utterance, 
the  futility  of  enthusiasm,  the  inaccessibility  of  the  ideal,  the 
practical  absurdity  of  trying  to  realise  any  of  the  mind's  inward 
dreams  :  these  were  the  kind  of  considerations  which  descended 
upon  him,  slowly  and  fatally,  crushing  down  the  newly  spring- 
ing growths  of  action  or  of  passion.  It  was  as  though  life  had 
demonstrated  to  him  the  essential  truth  of  a  childish  saying  of 
his  own  which  had  startled  and  displeased  his  Calvinist  mother 
years  before.  '  Mother,'  the  delicate,  large-eyed  child  had  said 
to  her  one  day  in  a  fit  of  physical  weariness,  '  how  is  it  I  dislike 
the  things  I  dislike  so  much  more  than  I  like  the  things  I 
like?' 

So  he  wrote  no  more2  he  quarrelled  no  more,  he  meddled  with 
the  great  passionate  things  of  life  and  expression  no  more.  On 
his  taking  up  residence  in  St.  Anselm's,  indeed,  and  on  his  being 
appointed  first  lecturer  and  then  tutor,  he  had  a  momentary 
pleasure  in  the  thought  of  teaching.  His  mind  was  a  storehouse 
of  thought  and  fact,  and  to  the  man  brought  up  at  a  dull  pro- 
vincial day-school  and  never  allowed  to  associate  freely  with  his 
kind,  the  bright  lads  fresh  from  Eton  and  Harrow  about  him 
were  singularly  attractive.  But  a  few  terms  were  enough  to 


54  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

scatter  this  illusion  too.  He  could  not  be  simple,  he  could  not 
be  spontaneous ;  he  was  tormented  by  self -consciousness,  and  it 
was  impossible  to  him  to  talk  and  behave  as  those  talk  and 
behave  who  have  been  brought  up  more  or  less  in  the  big  world 
from  the  beginning.  So  this  dream,  too,  faded,  for  youth  asks, 
before  all  things,  simplicity  and  spontaneity  in  those  who  would 
take  possession  of  it.  His  lectures,  which  were  at  first  brilliant 
enough  to  attract  numbers  of  men  from  other  colleges,  became 
gradually  mere  dry,  ingenious  skeletons,  without  life  or  feeling. 
It  was  possible  to  learn  a  great  deal  from  him  ;  it  was  not  pos- 
sible to  catch  from  him  any  contagion  of  that  amor  intellectualis 
which  had  flamed  at  one  moment  so  high  within  him.  He  ceased 
to  compose ;  but  as  the  intellectual  faculty  must  have  some  em- 
ployment, he  became  a  translator,  a  contributor  to  dictionaries, 
a  microscopic  student  of  texts,  not  in  the  interest  of  anything 
beyond,  but  simply  as  a  kind  of  mental  stone-breaking. 

The  only  survival  of  that  moment  of  glow  and  colour  in  his 
life  was  his  love  of  music  and  the  theatre.  Almost  every  year 
he  disappeared  to  France  to  haunt  the  Paris  theatres  for  a  fort- 
night •  to  Berlin  or  Bayreuth  to  drink  his  fill  of  music.  He 
talked  neither  of  music  nor  of  acting ;  he  made  no  one  sharer  of 
his  enjoyment,  if  he  did  enjoy.  It  was  simply  his  way  of  cheat- 
ing his  creative  faculty,  which,  though  it  had  grown  impotent, 
was  still  there,  still  restless.  Altogether  a  melancholy,  pitiable 
man — at  once  thorough-going  sceptic  and  thorough-going  idealist, 
the  victim  of  that  critical  sense  which  says  No  to  every  impulse, 
and  is  always  restlessly,  and  yet  hopelessly,  seeking  the  future 
through  the  neglected  and  outraged  present. 

And  yet  the  man's  instincts,  at  this  period  of  his  life  at  any 
rate,  were  habitually  kindly  and  affectionate.  He  knew  nothing 
of  women,  and  was  not  liked  by  them,  but  it  was  not  his  fault 
if  he  made  no  impression  on  the  youth  about  him.  It  seemed  to 
him  that  he  was  always  seeking  in  their  eyes  and  faces  for  some 
light  of  sympathy  which  was"  always  escaping  him,  and  which 
he  was  powerless  to  compel.  He  met  it  for  the  first  time  in 
Robert  Elsmere.  The  susceptible,  poetical  boy  was  struck  at 
some  favourable  moment  by  that  romantic  side  of  the  ineffective 
tutor — his  silence,  his  melancholy,  his  personal  beauty — which 
no  one  else,  with  perhaps  one  or  two  exceptions  among  the 
older  men,  cared  to  take  into  account ;  or  touched  perhaps  by 
some  note  in  him,  surprised  in  passing,  of  weariness  or  shrink- 
ing, as  compared  with  the  contemptuous  tone  of  the  College 
towards  him.  He  showed  his  liking  impetuously,  boyishly,  as 
his  way  was,  and  thenceforward  during  his  University  career 
Langham  became  his  slave.  He  had  no  ambition  for  himself ; 
his  motto  might  have  been  that  dismal  one — '  The  small  things 
of  life  are  odious  to  me,  and  the  habit  of  them  enslaves  me  :  the 
great  things  of  life  are  eternally  attractive  to  me,  and  indolence 
and  fear  put  them  by  ; '  but  for  the  University  chances  of  this 
lanky,  red-haired  youth — with  his  eagerness,  his  boundless  curi- 


CHAP,  v  WESTMORELAND  55 

osity,  his  genius  for  all  sorts  of  lovable  mistakes — he  disquieted 
himself  greatly.  He  tried  to  discipline  the  roving  mind,  to  infuse 
into  the  boy's  literary  temper  the  delicacy,  the  precision,  the 
subtlety  of  his  own.  His  fastidious,  critical  habits  of  work 
supplied  exactly  that  antidote  which  Elsmere's  main  faults  of 
haste  and  carelessness  required.  He  was  always  holding  up 
before  him  the  inexhaustible  patience  and  labour  involved 
in  all  true  knowledge  ;  and  it  was  to  the  germs  of  critical  judg- 
ment so  implanted  in  him  that  Elsmere  owed  many  of  the  later 
growths  of  his  development — growths  with  which  we  have  not 
yet  to  concern  ourselves. 

And  in  return,  the  tutor  allowed  himself  rarely,  very  rarely, 
a  moment  of  utterance  from  the  depths  of  his  real  self.  One 
evening  in  the  summer  term  following  the  boy's  matriculation, 
Elsmere  brought  him  an  essay  after  Hall,  and  they  sat  on  talk- 
ing afterwards.  It  was  a  rainy,  cheerless  evening ;  the  first 
contest  of  the  Boats  week  had  been  rowed  in  cold  wind  and 
sleet ;  a  dreary  blast  whistled  through  the  College.  Suddenly 
Langham  reached  out  his  hand  for  an  open  letter.  '  I  have  had 
an  offer,  Elsmere,'  he  said  abruptly. 

And  he  put  it  into  his  hand.  It  was  the  offer  of  an  important 
Scotch  professorship,  coming  from  the  man  most  influential  in 
assigning  it.  The  last  occupant  of  the  post  had  been  a  scholar 
of  European  eminence.  Langham's  contributions  to  a  great 
foreign  review,  and  certain  Oxford  recommendations,  were  the 
basis  of  the  present  overture,  which,  coming  from  one  who  was 
himself  a  classic  of  the  classics,  was  couched  in  terms  flattering 
to  any  young  man's  vanity. 

Robert  looked  up  with  a  joyful  exclamation  when  he  had 
finished  the  letter. 

'  I  congratulate  you,  sir.' 

'  I  have  refused  it,'  said  Langham  abruptly. 

His  companion  sat  open-mouthed.  Young  as  he  was,  he 
knew  perfectly  well  that  this  particular  appointment  was  one 
of  the  blue  ribbons  of  British  scholarship. 

'  Do  you  think — '  said  the  other  in  a  tone  of  singular  vibra- 
tion, which  had  in  it  a  note  of  almost  contemptuous  irritation — 
'  do  you  think  /  am  the  man  to  get  and  keep  a  hold  on  a  ram- 
pagious  class  of  hundreds  of  Scotch  lads  ?  Do  you  think  /  am 
the  man  to  carry  on  what  Reid  began — Reid,  that  old  fighter, 
that  preacher  of  all  sorts  of  jubilant  dogmas  1 ' 

He  looked  at  Elsmere  under  his  straight  black  brows  im- 
periously. The  youth  felt  the  nervous  tension  in  the  elder  man's 
voice  and  manner,  was  startled  by  a  confidence  never  before 
bestowed  upon  him,  close  as  that  unequal  bond  between  them 
had  been  growing  during  the  six  months  of  his  Oxford  life,  and 
plucking  up  courage  hurled  at  him  a  number  of  frank,  young 
expostulations,  which  really  put  into  friendly  shape  all  that 
was  being  said  about  Langham  in  his  College  and  in  the  Uni- 
versity. Why  was  he  so  self-distrustful,  so  absurdly  diffident 


56  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

of  responsibility,  so  bent  on  hiding  his  great  gifts  under  a 
bushel  1 

The  tutor  smiled  sadly,  and,  sitting  down,  buried  his  head  in 
his  hands  and  said  nothing  for  a  while.  Then  he  looked  up  and 
stretched  out  a  hand  towards  a  book  which  lay  on  a  table  near. 
It  was  the  Reveries  of  Senancour.  'My  answer  is  written 
/tere,'  he  said.  '  It  will  seem  to  you  now,  Elsmere,  mere  Mid- 
summer madness.  May  it  always  seem  so  to  you.  Forgive  me. 
The  pressure  of  solitude  sometimes  is  too  great.' 

Elsmere  looked  up  with  one  of  his  flashing,  affectionate 
smiles,  and  took  the  book  from  Langham's  hand.  He  found  on 
the  open  page  a  marked  passage  : 

'  Oh  swiftly  passing  seasons  of  life  !  There  was  a  time  when 
men  seemed  to  be  sincere ;  when  thought  was  nourished  on 
friendship,  kindness,  love ;  when  dawn  still  kept  its  brilliance, 
and  the  night  its  peace.  /  can,  the  soul  said  to  itself,  and  I 
will ;  I  will  do  all  that  is  right — all  that  is  natural.  But  soon 
resistance,  difficulty,  unforeseen,  coming  we  know  not  whence, 
arrest  us,  undeceive  us,  and  the  human  yoke  grows  heavy  on 
our  necks.  Thenceforward  we  become  merely  sharers  in  the 
common  woe.  Hemmed  in  on  all  sides,  we  feel  our  faculties 
only  to  realise  their  impotence :  we  have  time  and  strength 
to  do  what  we  must,  never  what  we  will.  Men  go  on  repeating 
the  words  work,  genius,  success.  Fools  !  Will  all  these  resound- 
ing projects,  though  they  enable  us  to  cheat  ourselves,  enable 
us  to  cheat  the  icy  fate  which  rules  us  and  our  globe,  wandering 
forsaken  through  the  vast  silence  of  the  heavens  ? ' 

Robert  looked  up  startled,  the  book  dropping  from  his  hand. 
The  words  sent  a  chill  to  the  heart  of  one  born  to  hope,  to  will, 
to  crave. 

Suddenly  Langham  dashed  the  volume  from  him,  almost  with 
violence. 

'  Forget  that  drivel,  Elsmere.  It  was  a  crime  to  show  it  to 
you.  It  is  not  sane ;  neither  perhaps  am  I.  But  I  am  not 
going  to  Scotland.  They  would  request  me  to  resign  in  a  week.' 

Long  after  Elsmere,  who  had  stayed  talking  a  while  on  other 
things,  had  gone,  Langham  sat  on  brooding  over  the  empty 
grate. 

'  Corrupter  of  youth  ! '  he  said  to  himself  once  bitterly.  And 
perhaps  it  was  to  a  certain  remorse  in  the  tutor's  mind  that 
Elsmere  owed  an  experience  of  great  importance  to  his  after 
life. 

The  name  of  a  certain  Mr.  Grey  had  for  some  time  before  his 
entry  at  Oxford  been  more  or  less  familiar  to  Robert's  ears  as 
that  of  a  person  of  great  influence  and  consideration  at  St. 
Anselm's.  His  tutor  at  Harden  had  spoken  of  him  in  the  boy's 
hearing  as  one  of  the  most  remarkable  men  of  the  generation, 
and  had  several  times  impressed  upon  his  pupil  that  nothing 
could  be  so  desirable  for  him  as  to  secure  the  friendship  of  such 
a  man.  It  was  on  the  occasion  of  his  first  interview  with  the 


CHAP,  v  WESTMORELAND  57 

Provost,  after  the  scholarship  examination,  that  Robert  was 
first  brought  face  to  face  with  Mr.  Grey.  He  could  remember 
a  short  dark  man  standing  beside  the  Provost,  who  had  been 
introduced  to  him  by  that  name,  but  the  nervousness  of  the 
moment  had  been  so  great  that  the  boy  had  been  quite  incapable 
of  giving  him  any  special  attention. 

During  his  first  term  and  a  half  of  residence,  Robert  occa- 
sionally met  Mr.  Grey  in  the  quadrangle  or  in  the  street,  and 
the  tutor,  remembering  the  thin,  bright-faced  youth,  would 
return  his  salutations  kindly,  and  sometimes  stop  to  speak  to 
him,  to  ask  him  if  he  were  comfortably  settled  in  his  rooms,  or 
make  a  remark  about  the  boats.  But  the  acquaintance  did  not 
seem  likely  to  progress,  for  Mr.  Grey  was  a  Greats  tutor,  and 
Robert  naturally  had  nothing  to  do  with  him  as  far  as  work 
was  concerned. 

However,  a  day  or  two  after  the  conversation  we  have 
described,  Robert,  going  to  Langham's  rooms  late  in  the  after- 
noon to  return  a  book  which  had  been  lent  to  him,  perceived 
two  figures  standing  talking  on  the  hearth-rug,  and  by  the 
western  light  beating  in  recognised  the  thick-set  frame  and 
broad  brow  of  Mr.  Grey. 

'  Come  in,  Elsmere,'  said  Langham,  as  he  stood  hesitating  on 
the  threshold.  '  You  have  met  Mr.  Grey  before,  I  think  ? ' 

'  We  first  met  at  an  anxious  moment,'  said  Mr.  Grey,  smiling 
and  shaking  hands  with  the  boy.  '  A  first  interview  with  the 
Provost  is  always  formidable.  I  remember  it  too  well  myself. 
You  did  very  well,  I  remember,  Mr.  Elsmere.  Well,  Langham, 
I  must  be  off'.  I  shall  be  late  for  my  meeting  as  it  is.  I  think 
we  have  settled  our  business.  Good-night.' 

Langham  stood  a  moment  after  the  door  closed,  eyeing  young 
Elsmere.  There  was  a  curious  struggle  going  on  in  the  tutor's 
mind. 

'Elsmere,'  he  said  at  last  abruptly,  'would  you  like  to  go 
to-night  and  hear  Grey  preach  1 ' 

'  Preach  ! '  exclaimed  the  lad.     '  I  thought  he  was  a  layman.' 

'So  he  is.  It  will  be  a  lay  sermon.  It  was  always  the 
custom  here  with  the  clerical  tutors  to  address  their  men  once 
a  term  before  Communion  Sunday,  and  some  years  ago,  when 
Grey  first  became  tutor,  he  determined,  though  he  was  a  lay- 
man, to  carry  on  the  practice.  It  was  an  extraordinary  effort, 
for  ne  is  a  man  to  whom  words  on  such  a  subject  are  the  coining 
of  his  heart's  blood,  and  he  has  repeated  it  very  rarely.  It  is 
two  years  now  since  his  last  address.' 

'  Of  course  I  should  like  to  go,'  said  Robert  with  eagerness. 
'  Is  it  open  ? ' 

'  Strictly  it  is  for  his  Greats  pupils,  but  I  can  take  you  in. 
It  is  hardly  meant  for  freshmen ;  but — well,  you  are  far  enough 
on  to  make  it  interesting  to  you.' 

'  The  lad  will  take  to  Grey's  influence  like  a  fish  to  water,' 
thought  the  tutor  to  himself  when  he  was  alone,  not  without 


58  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

a  strange  reluctance.  '  Well,  no  one  can  say  I  have  not  given 
him  his  opportunity  to  be  "  earnest." ' 

The  sarcasm  of  the  last  word  was  the  kind  of  sarcasm  which 
a  man  of  his  type  in  an  earlier  generation  might  have  applied 
to  the  '  earnestness '  of  an  Arnoldian  Rugby. 

At  eight  o'clock  that  evening  Robert  found  himself  crossing 
the  quadrangle  with  Langham  on  the  way  to  one  of  the  larger 
lecture  rooms,  which  was  to  be  the  scene  of  the  address.  The 
room  when  they  got  in  was  already  nearly  full,  all  the  working 
fellows  of  the  college  were  present,  and  a  body  of  some  thirty 
men  besides,  most  of  them  already  far  on  in  their  University 
career.  A  minute  or  two  afterwards  Mr.  Grey  entered.  The 
door  opening  on  to  the  quadrangle,  where  the  trees,  undeterred 
by  east  wind,  were  just  bursting  into  leaf,  was  shut ;  and  the 
little  assembly  knelt,  while  Mr.  Grey's  voice  with  its  broad 
intonation,  in  which  a  strong  native  homeliness  lingered  under 
the  gentleness  of  accent,  recited  the  collect  '  Lord  of  all  power 
and  might,'  a  silent  pause  following  the  last  words.  Then  the 
audience  settled  itself,  and  Mr.  Grey,  standing  by  a  small  deal 
table  with  the  gaslight  behind  him,  began  his  address. 

All  the  main  points  of  the  experience  which  followed  stamped 
themselves  on  Robert's  mind  with  extraordinary  intensity. 
Nor  did  he  ever  lose  the  memory  of  the  outward  scene.  In  after 
years,  memory  could  always  recall  to  him  at  will  the  face  and 
figure  of  the  speaker,  the  massive  head,  the  deep  eyes  sunk 
under  the  brows,  the  Midland  accent,  the  make  of  limb  and 
feature  which  seemed  to  have  some  suggestion  in  them  of  the 
rude  strength  and  simplicity  of  a  peasant  ancestry ;  and  then 
the  nobility,  the  fire,  the  spiritual  beauty  flashing  through  it 
all !  Here,  indeed,  was  a  man  on  whom  his  fellows  might  lean, 
a  man  in  whom  the  generation  of  spiritual  force  was  so  strong 
and  continuous  that  it  overflowed  of  necessity  into  the  poorer, 
barrener  lives  around  him,  kindling  and  enriching.  Robert  felt 
himself  seized  and  penetrated,  filled  with  a  fervour  and  an 
admiration  which  he  was  too  young  and  immature  to  analyse, 
but  which  was  to  be  none  the  less  potent  and  lasting. 

Much  of  the  sermon  itself,  indeed,  was  beyond  him.  It  was 
on  the  meaning  of  St.  Paul's  great  conception,  '  Death  unto  sin 
and  a  new  birth  unto  righteousness.'  What  did  the  Apostle 
mean  by  a  death  to  sin  and  self  ?  What  were  the  precise  ideas 
attached  to  the  words  '  risen  with  Christ '  1  Are  this  death*  and 
this  resurrection  necessarily  dependent  upon  certain  alleged 
historical  events?  Or  are  they  not  primarily,  and  were  they 
not,  even  in  the  mind  of  St.  Paul,  two  aspects  of  a  spiritual 
process  perpetually  re-enacted  in  the  soul  of  man,  and  consti- 
tuting the  veritable  revelation  of  God?  Which  is  the  stable 
and  lasting  witness  of  the  Father :  the  spiritual  history  of  the 
individual  and  the  world,  or  the  envelope  of  miracle  to  which 
hitherto  mankind  has  attributed  so  much  importance? 

Mr.  Grey's  treatment  of  these  questions  was  clothed,  through- 


CHAP,  v  WESTMORELAND  59 

out  a  large  portion  of  the  lecture,  in  metaphysical  language, 
which  no  boy  fresh  from  school,  however  intellectually  quick, 
could  be  expected  to  follow  with  any  precision.  It  was  not, 
therefore,  the  argument,  or  the  logical  structure  of  the  sermon, 
which  so  profoundly  affected  young  Elsmere.  It  was  the 
speaker  himself,  and  the  occasional  passages  in  which,  address- 
ing himself  to  the  practical  needs  of  his  hearers,  he  put  before 
them  the  claims  and  conditions  of  the  higher  life  with  a  pregnant 
simplicity  and  rugged  beauty  of  phrase.  Conceit,  selfishness, 
vice — how,  as  he  spoke  of  them,  they  seemed  to  wither  from  his 
presence  !  How  the  '  pitiful,  earthy  self '  with  its  passions  and 
its  cravings  sank  into  nothingness  beside  the  'great  ideas'  and 
the  'great  causes'  for  which,  as  Christians  and  as  men,  he  claimed 
their  devotion. 

To  the  boy  sitting  among  the  crowd  at.  the  back  of  the  room, 
his  face  supported  in  his  hands  and  his  gleaming  eyes  fixed  on 
the  speaker,  it  seemed  as  if  all  the  poetry  and  history  through 
which  a  restless  curiosity  and  ideality  had  carried  him  so  far, 
took  a  new  meaning  from  this  experience.  It  was  by  men  like 
this  that  the  moral  progress  of  the  world  had  been  shaped  and 
inspired ;  he  felt  brought  near  to  the  great  primal  forces  breath- 
ing through  the  divine  workshop;  and  in  place  of  natural 
disposition  and  reverent  compliance,  there  sprang  up  in  him 
suddenly  an  actual  burning  certainty  of  belief.  Axioms  are 
not  axioms,'  said  poor  Keats,  'till  they  have  been  proved  upon 
our  pulses  ; '  and  the  old  familiar  figure  of  the  Divine  combat, 
of  the  struggle  in  which  man  and  God  are  one,  was  proved  once 
more  upon  a  human  pulse  on  that  May  night,  in  the  hush  of 
that  quiet  lecture  room. 

As  the  little  moving  crowd  of  men  dispersed  over  the  main 
quadrangle  to  their  respective  staircases,  Langham  and  Robert 
stood  together  a  moment  in  the  windy  darkness,  lit  by  the 
occasional  glimmering  of  a  cloudy  moon. 

'  Thank  you,  thank  you,  sir ! '  said  the  lad,  eager  and  yet 
afraid  to  speak,  lest  he  should  break  the  spell  of  memory.  '  I 
should  be  sorry  indeed  to  have  missed  that ! ' 

'  Yes,  it  was  fine,  extraordinarily  fine,  the  best  he  has  ever 
given,  I  think.  Good-night.' 

And  Langham  turned  away,  his  head  sunk  on  his  breast, 
his  hands  behind  him.  Robert  went  to  his  room  conscious 
of  a  momentary  check  of  feeling.  But  it  soon  passed,  and 
he  sat  up  late,  thinking  of  the  sermon,  or  pouring  out  in  a 
letter  to  his  mother  the  new  hero-worship  of  which  his  mind 
was  full. 

A  few  days  later,  as  it  happened,  came  an  invitation  to  the 
junior  exhibitioner  to  spend  an  evening  at  Mr.  Grey's  house. 
Elsmere  went  in  a  state  of  curious  eagerness  and  trepidation, 
and  came  away  with  a  number  of  fresh  impressions  which,  when 
he  had  put  them  into  order,  did  but  quicken  his  new-born  sense 
of  devotion.  The  quiet  unpretending  house  with  its  exquisite 


60  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

neatness  and  its  abundance  of  books,  the  family  life,  with  the 
heart-happiness  underneath,  and  the  gentle  trust  and  courtesy 
on  the  surface,  the  little  touches  of  austerity  which  betrayed 
themselves  here  and  there  in  the  household  ways — all  these 
surroundings  stole  into  the  lad's  imagination,  touched  in  him 
responsive  fibres  of  taste  and  feeling. 

But  there  was  some  surprise,  too,  mingled  with  the  charm. 
He  came,  still  shaken,  as  it  were,  by  the  power  of  the  sermon, 
expecting  to  see  in  the  preacher  of  it  the  outward  and  visible 
signs  of  a  leadership  which,  as  he  already  knew,  was  a  great 
force  in  Oxford  life.  His  mood  was  that  of  the  disciple  only 
eager  to  be  enrolled.  And  what  he  found  was  a  quiet,  friendly, 
host,  surrounded  by  a  group  of  men  talking  the  ordinary 
pleasant  Oxford  chit-chat — the  river,  the  schools,  the  Union, 
the  football  matches,  and  so  on.  Every  now  and  then,  as 
Elsmere  stood  at  the  edge  of  the  circle  listening,  the  rugged 
face  in  the  centre  of  it  would  break  into  a  smile,  or  some  boyish 
speaker  would  elicit  the  low  spontaneous  laugh  in  which  there 
was  such  a  sound  of  human  fellowship,  such  a  genuine  note  of 
self-forgetfulness.  Sometimes  the  conversation  strayed  into 
politics,  and  then  Mr.  Grey,  an  eager  politician,  would  throw 
back  his  head,  and  talk  with  more  sparkle  and  rapidity,  flashing 
occasionally  into  grim  humour  which  seemed  to  throw  light  on 
the  innate  strength  and  pugnacity  of  the  peasant  and  Puritan 
breed  from  which  he  sprang.  Nothing  could  be  more  unlike 
the  inspired  philosopher,  the  mystic  surrounded  by  an  adoring 
school,  whom  Robert  had  been  picturing  to  himself  in  his  walk 
up  to  the  house,  through  the  soft  May  twilight. 

It  was  not  long  before  the  tutor  had  learned  to  take  much 
kindly  notice  of  the  ardent  and  yet  modest  exhibitioner,  in 
whose  future  it  was  impossible  not  to  feel  a  sympathetic 
interest. 

'  You  will  always  find  us  on  Sunday  afternoons,  before  chapel,' 
he  said  to  him  one  day  as  they  parted  after  watching  a  football 
match  in  the  damp  mists  of  the  Park,  and  the  boy's  flush  of 
pleasure  showed  how  much  he  valued  the  permission. 

For  three  years  those  Sunday  half -hours  were  the  great  charm 
of  Robert  Elsmere's  life.  When  he  came  to  look  back  upon 
them,  he  could  remember  nothing  very  definite.  A  few  inter- 
esting scraps  of  talk  about  books ;  a  good  deal  of  talk  about 
politics,  showing  in  the  tutor  a  living  interest  in  the  needs  and 
training  of  that  broadening  democracy  on  which  the  future  of 
England  rests  ;  a  few  graphic  sayings  about  individuals ;  above 
all,  a  constant  readiness  on  the  host's  part  to  listen,  to  sit  quiet, 
with  the  slight  unconscious  look  of  fatigue  which  was  so  eloquent 
of  a  strenuous  intellectual  life,  taking  kindly  heed  of  anything 
that  sincerity,  even  a  stupid  awkward  sincerity,  had  got  to  say 
— these  were  the  sort  of  impressions  they  had  left  behind  them. 
reinforced  always,  indeed,  by  the  one  continuous  impression  of 
a  great  soul  speaking  with  difficulty  and  labour,  but  still  clearly, 


OHAP.  v  WESTMORELAND  61 

still  effectually,  through  an  unblemished  series  of  noble  acts  and 
efforts. 

Term  after  term  passed  away.  Mrs.  Elsmere  became  more 
and  more  proud  of  her  boy,  and  more  and  more  assured  that  her 
years  of  intelligent  devotion  to  him  had  won  her  his  entire  love 
and  confidence,  '  so  long  as  they  both  should  live  : '  she  came  up 
to  see  him  once  or  twice,  making  Langham  almost  flee  the 
University  because  she  would  be  grateful  to  him  in  public,  and 
attending  the  boat-races  in  festive  attire  to  which  she  had 
devoted  the  most  anxious  attention  for  Robert's  sake,  and  which 
made  her,  dear,  good,  impracticable  soul,  the  observed  of  all 
observers.  When  she  came  she  and  Robert  talked  all  day,  so 
far  as  lectures  allowed,  and  most  of  the  night,  after  their  own 
eager,  improvident  fashion ;  and  she  soon  gathered,  with  that 
solemn,  half -tragic  sense  of  change  which  besets  a  mother's 
heart  at  such  a  moment,  that  there  were  many  new  forces  at 
work  in  her  boy's  mind,  deep  under-currents  of  feeling,  stirred 
in  him  by  the  Oxford  influences,  which  must  before  long  rise 
powerfully  to  the  surface. 

He  was  passing  from  a  bright  buoyant  lad  into  a  man,  and  a 
man  of  ardour  and  conviction.  And  the  chief  instrument  in  the 
transformation  was  Mr.  Grey. 

Elsmere  got  his  first  in  Moderations  easily.  But  the  Final 
Schools  were  a  different  matter.  In  the  first  days  of  his  return 
to  Oxford,  in  the  October  of  his  third  year,  while  he  was  still 
making  up  his  lecture  list,  and  taking  a  general  oversight  of  the 
work  demanded  from  him,  before  plunging  definitely  into  it,  he 
was  oppressed  with  a  sense  that  the  two  years  lying  before  him 
constituted  a  problem  which  would  be  harder  to  solve  than  any 
which  had  yet  been  set  him.  It  seemed  to  him  in  a  moment 
which  was  one  of  some  slackness  and  reaction,  that  he  had  been 
growing  too  fast.  He  had  been  making  friends  besides  in  far 
too  many  camps,  and  the  thought,  half  attractive,  half  repellent, 
of  all  those  midnight  discussions  over  smouldering  fires,  which 
Oxford  was  preparing  for  him,  those  fascinating  moments  of 
intellectual  fence  with  minds  as  eager  and  as  crude  as  his  own, 
and  of  all  the  delightful  dipping  into  the  very  latest  literature, 
which  such  moments  encouraged  and  involved,  seemed  to  convey 
a  sort  of  warning  to  the  boy's  will  that  it  was  not  equal  to  the 
situation.  He  was  neither  dull  enough  nor  great  enough  for  a 
striking  Oxford  success.  How  was  he  to  prevent  himself  from 
attempting  impossibilities  and  achieving  a  final  mediocrity  ? 
He  felt  a  dismal  certainty  that  he  should  never  be  able  to  con- 
trol the  strayings  of  will  and  curiosity,  now  into  this  path,  now 
into  that ;  and  a  still  stronger  and  genuine  certainty  that  it  is 
not  by  such  digression  that  a  man  gets  up  the  Ethics  or  the 
Annals. 

Langham  watched  him  with  a  half  irritable  attention.  In 
spite  ot  the  paralysis  of  all  natural  ambitions  in  himself,  he  was 
illogically  keen  that  Elsmere  should  win  the  distinctions  of  the 


62  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

place.  He,  the  most  laborious,  the  most  disinterested  of 
scholars,  turned  himself  almost  into  a  crammer  for  Elsmere's 
benefit.  He  abused  the  lad's  multifarious  reading,  declared  it 
was  no  better  than  dram-drinking,  and  even  preached  to  him  an 
ingenious  variety  of  mechanical  aids  to  memory  and  short  cuts 
to  knowledge,  till  Robert  would  turn  round  upon  him  with  some 
triumphant  retort  drawn  from  his  own  utterances  at  some 
sincerer  and  less  discreet  moment.  In  vain.  Langham  felt  a 
dismal  certainty  before  many  weeks  were  over  that  Elsmere 
would  miss  his  first  in  Greats.  He  was  too  curious,  too  rest- 
less, too  passionate  about  many  things.  Above  all  he  was 
beginning,  in  the  tutor's  opinion,  to  concern  himself  disastrously 
early  with  that  most  overwhelming  and  most  brain-confusing 
of  all  human  interests — the  interest  of  religion.  Grey  had  made 
him  '  earnest '  with  a  vengeance. 

Elsmere  was  now  attending  Grey's  philosophical  lectures, 
following  them  with  enthusiasm,  and  making  use  of  them,  as  so 
often  happens,  for  the  defence  and  fortification  of  views  quite 
other  than  his  teacher's.  The  whole  basis  of  Grey's  thought  was 
ardently  idealist  and  Hegelian.  He  had  broken  with  the  popu- 
lar Christianity,  but  for  him,  God,  consciousness,  duty,  were  the 
only  realities.  None  of  the  various  forms  of  materialist  thought 
escaped  his  challenge ;  no  genuine  utterance  of  the  spiritual 
life  of  man  but  was  sure  of  his  sympathy.  It  was  known  that 
after  having  prepared  himself  for  the  Christian  ministry  he  had 
remained  a  layman  because  it  had  become  impossible  to  him  to 
accept  miracle ;  and  it  was  evident  that  the  commoner  type  of 
Churchmen  regarded  him  as  an  antagonist  all  the  more  dangerous 
because  he  was  so  sympathetic.  But  the  negative  and  critical 
side  of  him  was  what  in  reality  told  least  upon  his  pupils.  He 
was  reserved,  he  talked  with  difficulty,  and  his  respect  for  the 
immaturity  of  the  young  lives  near  him  was  complete.  So  that 
what  he  sowed  others  often  reaped,  or  to  quote  the  expression 
of  a  well-known  rationalist  about  him  :  '  The  Tories  were  always 
carrying  off  his  honey  to  their  hive.'  Elsmere,  for  instance, 
took  in  all  that  Grey  had  to  give,  drank  in  all  the  ideal  fervour, 
the  spiritual  enthusiasm  of  the  great  tutor,  and  then,  as  Grey 
himself  would  have  done  some  twenty  years  earlier,  carried  his 
religious  passion  so  stimulated  into  the  service  of  the  great 
positive  tradition  around  him. 

And  at  that  particular  moment  in  Oxford  history,  the  passage 
from  philosophic  idealism  to  glad  acquiescence  in  the  received 
Christian  system,  was  a  peculiarly  easy  one.  It  was  the  most 
natural  thing  in  the  world  that  a  young  man  of  Elsmere's 
temperament  should  rally  to  the  Church.  The  place  was  pass- 
ing through  one  of  those  periodical  crises  of  reaction  against  an 
overdriven  rationalism,  which  show  themselves  with  tolerable 
regularity  in  any  great  centre  of  intellectual  activity.  It  had 
begun  to  be  recognised  with  a  great  burst  of  enthusiasm  and 
astonishment,  that,  after  all,  Mill  and  Herbert  Spencer  had  not 


CHAP,  v  WESTMORELAND  63 

said  the  last  word  on  all  things  in.  heaven  and  earth.  And  now 
there  was  exaggerated  recoil.  A  fresh  wave  of  religious  romanti- 
cism was  fast  gathering  strength  :  the  spirit  of  Newman  had 
reappeared  in  the  place  which  Newman  had  loved  and  left ; 
religion  was  becoming  once  more  popular  among  the  most 
trivial  souls,  and  a  deep  reality  among  a  large  proportion  of  the 
nobler  on.es. 

With  this  movement  of  opinion  Kobert  had  very  soon  found 
himself  in  close  and  sympathetic  contact.  The  meagre  impres- 
sion left  upon  his  boyhood  by  the  somewhat  grotesque  succes- 
sion of  the  Harden  curates,  and  by  his  mother's  shafts  of  wit  at 
their  expense,  was  soon  driven  out  of  him  by  the  stateliness  and 
comely  beauty  of  the  Church  order  as  it  was  revealed  to  him  at 
Oxford.  The  religious  air,  the  solemn  beauty  of  the  place  itself, 
its  innumerable  associations  with  an  organised  and  venerable 
faith,  the  great  public  functions  and  expressions  of  that  faith, 
possessed  the  boy's  imagination  more  and  more.  As  he  sat  in 
the  undergraduates'  gallery  at  St.  Mary's  on  the  Sundays,  when 
the  great  High  Church  preacher  of  the  moment  occupied  the 

Silpit,  and  looked  down  on  the  crowded  building,  full  of  grave 
ack-gowned  figures,  and  framed  in  one  continuous  belt  of 
closely  packed  boyish  faces ;  as  he  listened  to  the  preacher's 
vibrating  voice,  rising  and  falling  with  the  orator's  instinct  for 
musical  effect ;  or  as  he  stood  up  with  the  great  surrounding 
body  of  undergraduates  to  send  the  melody  of  some  Latin  hymn 
rolling  into  the  far  recesses  of  the  choir,  the  sight  and  the  ex- 
perience touched  his  inmost  feeling,  and  satisfied  all  the  poetical 
and  dramatic  instincts  of  a  passionate  nature.  The  system 
behind  the  sight  took  stronger  and  stronger  hold  upon  him  ;  he 
began  to  wish  ardently  and  continuously  to  become  a  part  of  it, 
to  cast  in  his  lot  definitely  with  it. 

One  May  evening  he  was  wandering  by  himself  along  the 
towing-path  which  skirts  the  upper  river,  a  prey  to  many 
thoughts,  to  forebodings  about  the  schools  which  were  to  begin 
in  three  weeks,  and  to  speculations  as  to  how  his  mother  would 
take  the  news  of  the  second  class,  which  he  himself  felt  to  be 
inevitable.  Suddenly,  for  no  apparent  reason,  there  flashed 
into  his  mind  the  little  conversation  with  his  mother,  which  had 
taken  place  nearly  four  years  before,  in  the  garden  at  Trinity. 
He  remembered  the  antagonism  which  the  idea  of  a  clerical  life 
for  him  had  raised  in  both  of  them,  and  a  smile  at  his  own 
ignorance  and  his  mother's  prejudice  passed  over  his  quick 
young  face.  He  sat  down  on  the  grassy  bank,  a  mass  of  reeds 
at  his  feet,  the  shadows  of  the  poplars  behind  him  lying  across 
the  still  river ;  and  opposite,  the  wide  green  expanse  of  the 
great  town-meadow,  dotted  with  white  patches  of  geese  and 
herds  of  grazing  horses.  There,  with  a  sense  of  something 
solemn  and  critical  passing  over  him,  he  began  to  dream  out  his 
future  life. 

And  when  he  rose  half  an  hour  afterwards,  and  turned  his 


64  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

steps  homewards,  he  knew  with  an  inward  tremor  of  heart 
that  the  next  great  step  of  the  way  was  practically  taken.  For 
there  by  the  gliding  river,  and  in  view  of  the  distant  Oxford 
spires,  which  his  fancy  took  to  witness  the  act,  he  had  vowed 
himself  in  prayer  and  self-abasement  to  the  ministry  of  the 
Church. 

During  the  three  weeks  that  followed  he  made  some  frantic 
efforts  to  make  up  lost  ground.  He  had  not  been  idle  for  a 
single  day,  but  he  had  been  unwise,  an  intellectual  spendthrift, 
living  in  a  continuous  succession  of  enthusiasms,  and  now  at  the 
critical  moment  his  stock  of  nerve  and  energy  was  at  a  low  ebb. 
He  went  in  depressed  and  tired,  his  friends  watching  anxiously 
for  the  result.  On  the  day  of  the  Logic  paper,  as  he  emerged 
into  the  Schools  quadrangle,  he  felt  his  arm  caught  by  Mr.  Grey. 

'  Come  with  me  for  a  walk,  Elsmere  ;  you  look  as  if  some  air 
would  do  you  good.' 

Robert  acquiesced,  and  the  two  men  turned  into  the  passage 
way  leading  out  on  to  Radcliffe  Square. 

'  I  have  done  for  myself,  sir,'  said  the  youth  with  a  sigh,  half 
impatience,  half  depression.  '  It  seems  to  me  to-day  that  I  had 
neither  mind  nor  memory.  If  I  get  a  second  I  shall  be  lueky.' 
•  '  Oh,  you  will  get  your  second  whatever  happens,'  said  Mr. 
Grey  quietly,  '  and  you  mustn't  be  too  much  cast  down  about  it 
if  you  don't  get  your  first.' 

This  implied  acceptance  of  his  partial  defeat,  coming  from 
another's  lips,  struck  the  excitable  Robert  like  a  lash.  It  was 
only  what  he  had  been  saying  to  himself,  but  in  the  most  pessi- 
mist forecasts  we  make  for  ourselves,  there  is  always  an  under 
protest  of  hope. 

'  I  have  been  wasting  my  time  here  lately,'  he  said,  hurriedly 
raising  his  college  cap  from  his  brows  as  ii'  it  oppressed  them, 
and  pushing  his  hair  back  with  a  weary  restless  gesture. 

'  No,'  said  Mr.  Grey,  turning  his  kind  frank  eyes  upon  him. 
'  As  far  as  general  training  goes,  you  have  not  wasted  your  time 
at  all.  There  are  many  clever  men  who  don't  get  a  first  class, 
and  yet  it  is  good  for  them  to  be  here — so  long  as  they  are  not 
loungers  and  idlers,  of  course.  And  you  have  not  been  a  lounger  ; 
you  have  been  headstrong,  and  a  little  over-confident,  perhaps,' 
— the  speaker's  smile  took  all  the  sting  out  of  the  words — '  but 
you  have  grown  into  a  man,  and  you  are  fit  now  for  man's  work. 
Don't  let  yourself  be  depressed,  Elsmere.  You  will  do  better  in 
life  than  you  have  done  in  examination.' 

The  young  man  was  deeply  touched.  This  tone  of  personal 
comment  and  admonition  was  very  rare  with  Mr.  Grey.  He 
felt  a  sudden  consciousness  of  a  shared  burden  which  was  in- 
finitely soothing,  and  though  he  made  no  answer,  his  face  lost 
something  of  its  harassed  look  as  the  two  walked  on  together 
down  Oriel  Street  and  into  Merton  Meadows. 

'  Have  you  any  immediate  plans  ? '  said  Mr.  Grey,  as  they 
turned  into  the  Broad  Walk,  now  in  the  full  leafage  of  June, 


CHAP,  v  WESTMORELAND  65 

and  rustling  under  a  brisk  western  wind  blowing  from   the 
river. 

'No :  at  least  I  suppose  it  will  be  no  good  my  trying  for  a 
fellowship.  But  I  meant  to  tell  you,  sir,  of  one  thing — I  have 
made  up  my  mind  to  take  orders.' 

'You  have?    When?' 

'  Quite  lately.  So  that  fixes  me,  I  suppose,  to  come  back  for 
divinity  lectures  in  the  autumn.' 

Mr.  Grey  said  nothing  for  a  while,  and  they  strolled  in  and 
out  of  the  great  shadows  thrown  by  the  elms  across  their  path. 

'  You  feel  no  difficulties  in  the  way  1 '  he  asked  at  last,  with  a 
certain  quick  brusqueness  of  manner. 

'  No,'  said  Eobert  eagerly.  '  I  never  had  any.  Perhaps,'  he 
added,  with  a  sudden  humility,  '  it  is  because  I  have  never  gone 
deep  enough.  What  I  believe  might  have  been  worth  more  if  I 
had  had  more  struggle ;  but  it  has  all  seemed  so  plain.' 

The  young  voice  speaking  with  hesitation  and  reserve,  and 
yet  with  a  deep  inner  conviction,  was  pleasant  to  hear.  Mr. 
Grey  turned  towards  it,  and  the  great  eyes  under  the  furrowed 
brow  had  a  peculiar  gentleness  of  expression. 

'  You  will  probably  be  very  happy  in  the  life,'  he  said.  '  The 
Church  wants  men  of  your  sort.' 

But  through  all  the  sympathy  of  the  tone  Robert  was  con- 
scious of  a  veil  between  them.  He  knew,  of  course,  pretty  much 
what  it  was,  and  with  a  sudden  impulse  he  felt  that  he  would 
have  given  worlds  to  break  through  it  and  talk  frankly  with 
this  man  whom  he  revered  beyond  all  others,  wide  as  was  the 
intellectual  difference  between  them.  But  the  tutor's  reticence 
and  the  younger  man's  respect  prevented  it. 

When  the  unlucky  second  class  was  actually  proclaimed  to 
the  world,  Langham  took  it  to  heart  perhaps  more  than  either 
Elsmere  or  his  mother.  No  one  knew  better  than  he  what 
Elsmere's  gifts  were.  It  was  absurd  that  he  should  not  have 
made  more  of  them  in  sight  of  the  public.  '  Le  cle'rical-isme, 
voila  Vennemi  ! '  was  about  the  gist  of  Langham's  mood  during 
the  days  that  followed  on  the  class  list. 

Elsmere,  however,  did  not  divulge  his  intention  of  taking 
orders  to  him  till  ten  days  afterwards,  when  he  had  carried  off 
Langham  to  stay  at  Harden,  and  he  and  his  old  tutor  were 
smoking  in  his  mother's  little  garden  one  moonlit  night. 

When  he  had  finished  his  statement  Langham  stood  still  a 
moment  watching  the  wreaths  of  smoke  as  they  curled  and 
vanished.  The  curious  interest  in  Elsmere's  career,  which 
during  a  certain  number  of  months  had  made  him  almost 
practical,  almost  energetic,  had  disappeared.  He  was  his  own 
languid,  paradoxical  self. 

'  yVell,  after  all,'  he  said  at  last,  very  slowly,  'the  difficulty 
lies  in  preaching  anything.  One  may  as  well  preach  a  respect- 
able mythology  as  anything  else.' 

'  What  do  you  mean  by  a  mythology  ? '  cried  Robert  hotly. 

F 


66  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

'Simply  ideas,  or  experiences,  personified,'  said  Langham, 
puffing  away.  'I  take  it  they  are  the  subject-matter  of  all 
theologies.' 

'I  don't  understand  you,'  said  Robert,  flushing.  'To  the 
Christian,  facts  have  been  the  medium  by  which  ideas  the  world 
could  not  otherwise  have  come  at  have  been  communicated  to 
man.  Christian  theology  is  a  system  of  ideas  indeed,  but  of 
ideas  realised,  made  manifest  in  facts.' 

Langham  looked  at  him  for  a  moment,  undecided  ;  then  that 
suppressed  irritation  we  have  already  spoken  of  broke  through. 
'  How  do  you  know  they  are  facts  ? '  he  said  drily. 

The  younger  man  took  up  the  challenge  with  all  his  natural 
eagerness,  and  the  conversation  resolved  itself  into  a  discussion 
of  Christian  evidences.  Or  rather  Robert  held  forth,  and  Lang- 
ham  kept  him  going  by  an  occasional  remark  which  acted  like 
the  prick  of  a  spur.  The  tutor's  psychological  curiosity  was 
soon  satisfied.  He  declared  to  himself  that  the  intellect  had 
precious  little  to  do  with  Elsmere's  Christianity.  He  had  got 
hold  of  all  the  stock  apologetic  arguments,  and  used  them,  his 
companion  admitted,  with  ability  and  ingenuity.  But  they 
were  merely  the  outworks  of  the  citadel.  The  inmost  fortress 
was  held  by  something  wholly  distinct  from  intellectual  con- 
viction— by  moral  passion,  by  love,  by  feeling,  by  that  mysticism, 
in  short,  which  no  healthy  youth  should  be  without. 

'  He  imagines  he  has  satisfied  his  intellect,'  was  the  inward 
comment  of  one  of  the  most  melancholy  of  sceptics,  '  and  he  has 
never  so  much  as  exerted  it.  What  a  brute  I  am  to  protest ! ' 

And  suddenly  Langham  threw  up  the  sponge.  He  held  out 
his  hand  to  his  companion,  a  momentary  gleam  of  tenderness  in 
his  black  eyes,  such  as  on  one  or  two  critical  occasions  before 
had  disarmed  the  impetuous  Elsmere. 

'No  use  to  discuss  it  further.  You  have  a  strong  case,  of 
course,  and  you  have  put  it  well.  Only,  when  you  are  pegging 
away  at  reforming  and  enlightening  the  world,  don't  trample 
too  much  on  the  people  who  have  more  than  enough  to  do  to 
enlighten  themselves.' 

As  to  Mrs.  Elsmere,  in  this  new  turn  of  her  son's  fortunes, 
she  realised  with  humorous  distinctness  that  for  some  years  past 
Robert  had  been  educating  her  as  well  as  himself.  Her  old  re- 
bellious sense  of  something  inherently  absurd  in  the  clerical 
status  had  been  gradually  slain  in  her  by  her  long  contact 
through  him  with  the  finer  and  more  imposing  aspects  of 
church  life.  She  was  still  on  light  skirmishing  terms  with  the 
Harden  curates,  and  at  times  she  would  flame  out  into  the 
wildest,  wittiest  threats  and  gibes,  for  the  momentary  satisfac- 
tion of  her  own  essentially  lay  instincts ;  but  at  bottom  she 
knew  perfectly  well  that,  when  the  moment  came,  no  mother 
could  be  more  loyal,  more  easily  imposed  upon,  than  she 
would  be. 

'  I  suppose,  then,  Robert,  we  shall  be  back  at  Murewell  before 


CHAP,  v  WESTMORELAND  67 

very  long,'  she  said  to  him  one  morning  abruptly,  studying  him 
the  while  out  of  her  small  twinkling  eyes.  What  dignity  there 
was  already  in  the  young  lightly-built  frame  !  what  frankness 
and  character  in  the  irregular,  attractive  face  ! 

'  Mother,'  cried  Elsmere  indignantly,  '  what  do  you  take  me 
for  ?  Do  you  imagine  I  am  going  to  bury  myself  in  the  country 
at  five  or  six-and-twenty,  take  six  hundred  a  year,  and  nothing 
to  do  for  it  ?  That  would  be  a  deserter's  act  indeed.' 

Mrs.  Elsmere  shrugged  her  shoulders.  '  Oh,  I  supposed  you 
would  insist  on  killing  yourself,  to  begin  with.  To  most  people 
nowadays  that  seems  to  be  the  necessary  preliminary  of  a  useful 
career.' 

Robert  laughed  and  kissed  hei',  but  her  question  had  stirred 
him  so  much  that  he  sat  down  that  very  evening  to  write  to  his 
cousin  Mowbray  Elsmere.  He  announced  to  him  that  he  was 
about  to  read  for  orders,  and  that  at  the  same  time  he  re- 
linquished all  claim  on  the  living  of  Murewell.  '  Do  what  you 
like  with  it  when  it  falls  vacant,'  he  wrote,  '  without  reference 
to  me.  My  views  are  strong  that  before  a  clergyman  in  health 
and  strength,  and  in  no  immediate  want  of  money,  allows  him- 
self the  luxury  of  a  country  parish,  he  is  bound,  for  some  years 
at  any  rate,  to  meet  the  challenge  of  evil  and  poverty  where  the 
fight  is  hardest — among  our  English  town  population.' 

Sir  Mowbray  Elsmere  replied  curtly  in  a  day  or  two  to  the 
effect  that  Robert's  letter  seemed  to  him  superfluous.  He,  Sir 
Mowbray,  had  nothing  to  do  with  his  cousin's  views.  When  the 
living  was  vacant — the  present  holder,  however,  was  uncommon 
tough  and  did  not  mean  dying — he  should  follow  out  the  in- 
structions of  his  father's  will,  and  if  Robert  did  not  want  the 
thing  he  could  say  so. 

In  the  autumn  Robert  and  his  mother  went  back  to  Oxford. 
The  following  spring  he  redeemed  his  Oxford  reputation  com- 
pletely by  winning  a  Fellowship  at  Merton  after  a  brilliant 
fight  with  some  of  the  best  men  of  his  year,  and  in  June  he  was 
ordained. 

In  the  summer  term  some  teaching  work  was  offered  him  at 
Merton,  and  by  Mr.  Grey's  advice  he  accepted  it,  thus  postpon- 
ing for  a  while  that  London  curacy  and  that  stout  grapple  with 
human  need  at  its  sorest  for  which  his  soul  was  pining.  '  Stay 
here  a  year  or  two,'  Grey  said  bluntly  ;  '  you  are  at  the  beginning 
of  your  best  learning  time,  and  you  are  not  one  of  the  natures 
who  can  do  without  books.  You  will  be  all  the  better  worth 
having  afterwards,  and  there  is  no  lack  of  work  here  for  a  man's 
moral  energies.' 

Langham  took  the  same  line,  and  Elsmere  submitted.  Three 
happy  and  fruitful  years  followed.  The  young  lecturer  de- 
veloped an  amazing  power  of  work.  That  concentration  which 
he  had  been  unable  to  achieve  for  himself  his  will  was  strong 
enough  to  maintain  when  it  was  a  question  of  meeting  the 
demands  of  a  college  class  in  which  he  was  deeply  interested. 


68  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

He  became  a  stimulating  and  successful  teacher,  and  one  of  the 
most  popular  of  men.  His  passionate  sense  of  responsibility 
towards  his  pupils  made  him  load  himself  with  burdens  to  which 
he  was  constantly  physically  unequal,  and  fill  the  vacations 
almost  as  full  as  the  terms.  And  as  he  was  comparatively  a 
man  of  means,  his  generous  impetuous  temper  was  able  to 
gratify  itself  in  ways  that  would  have  been  impossible  to  others. 
The  story  of  his  summer  reading  parties,  for  instance,  if  one 
could  have  unravelled  it,  would  have  been  found  to  be  one  long 
string  of  acts  of  kindness  towards  men  poorer  and  duller  than 
himself. 

At  the  same  time  he  formed  close  and  eager  relations  with 
the  heads  of  the  religious  party  in  Oxford.  His  mother's  Evan- 
gelical training  of  him  and  Mr.  Grey's  influence,  together,  per- 
haps, with  certain  drifts  of  temperament,  prevented  him  from 
becoming  a  High  Churchman.  The  sacramental,  ceremonial 
view  of  the  Church  never  took  hold  upon  him.  But  to  the 
English  Church  as  a  great  national  institution  for  the  promotion 
of  God's  work  on  earth  no  one  could  have  been  more  deeply 
loyal,  and  none  coming  close  to  him  could  mistake  the  fervour 
and  passion  of  his  Christian  feeling.  At  the  same  time  he  did 
not  know  what  rancour  or  bitterness  meant,  so  that  men  of  all 
shades  of  Christian  belief  reckoned  a  friend  in  him,  and  he  went 
through  life  surrounded  by  an  unusual,  perhaps  a  dangerous 
amount  of  liking  and  affection.  He  threw  himself  ardently  into 
the  charitable  work  of  Oxford,  now  helping  a  High  Church 
vicar,  and  now  toiling  with  Grey  and  one  or  two  other  Liberal 
fellows,  at  the  maintenance  of  a  coffee-palace  and  lecture-room 
just  started  by  them  in  one  of  the  suburbs  ;  while  in  the  second 
year  of  his  lectureship  the  success  of  some  first  attempts  at 
preaching  fixed  the  attention  of  the  religious  leaders  upon  him 
as  upon  a  man  certain  to  make  his  mark. 

So  the  three  years  passed — years  not,  perhaps,  of  great  intel- 
lectual advance,  for  other  forces  in  him  than  those  of  the 
intellect  were  mainly  to  the  fore,  but  years  certainly  of  continu- 
ous growth  in  character  and  moral  experience.  And  at  the  end 
of  them  Mowbray  Elsmere  made  his  offer,  and  it  was  accepted. 

The  secret  of  it,  of  course,  was  overwork.  Mrs.  Elsmere,  from 
the  little  house  in  Merton  Street,  where  she  had  established 
herself,  had  watched  her  boy's  meteoric  career  through  these 
crowded  months  with  very  frequent  misgivings.  No  one  knew 
better  than  she  that  Robert  was  constitutionally  not  of  the 
toughest  fibre,  and  she  realised  long  before  he  did  that  the 
Oxford  life  as  he  was  bent  on  leading  it  must  end  for  him  in 
premature  breakdown.  But,  as  always  happens,  neither  her 
remonstrances,  nor  Mr.  Grey's  common -sense,  nor  Langham's 
fidgety  protests  had  any  effect  on  the  young  enthusiast  to  whom 
self-slaughter  came  so  easy.  During  the  latter  half  of  his  third 
year  of  teaching  he  was  continually  being  sent  away  by  the 
doctors,  and  coming  back  only  to  break  down  again.  At  last, 


CHAP,  v  WESTMORELAND  69 

in  the  January  of  his  fourth  year,  the  collapse  became  so  de- 
cided that  he  consented,  bribed  by  the  prospect  of  the  Holy 
Land,  to  go  away  for  three  months  to  Egypt  and  the  East, 
accompanied  by  his  mother  and  a  college  friend. 

Just  before  their  departure  news  reached  him  of  the  death  of 
the  rector  of  Murewell,  followed  by  a  formal  offer  of  the  living 
from  Sir  Mowbray.  At  the  moment  when  the  letter  arrived  he 
was  feeling  desperately  tired  and  ill,  and  in  after-life  he  never 
forgot  the  half -superstitious  thrill  and  deep  sense  of  depression 
with  which  he  received  it.  For  within  him  was  a  slowly- 
emerging,  despairing  conviction  that  he  was  indeed  physically 
unequal  to  the  claims  of  his  Oxford  work,  and  if  so,  still  more 
unequal  to  grappling  with  the  hardest  pastoral  labour  and  the 
worst  forms  of  English  poverty.  And  the  coincidence  of  the 
Murewell  incumbent's  death  struck  his  sensitive  mind  as  a 
Divine  leading. 

But  it  was  a  painful  defeat.  He  took  the  letter  to  Grey,  and 
Grey  strongly  advised  him  to  accept. 

'  You  overdrive  your  scruples,  Elsmere,'  said  the  Liberal  tutor 
with  emphasis.  'No  one  can  say  a  living  with  1200  souls,  and 
no  curate,  is  a  sinecure.  As  for  hard  town  work,  it  is  absurd — 
you  couldn't  stand  it.  And  after  all,  I  imagine,  there  are  some 
souls  worth  saving  out  of  the  towns.' 

Elsmere  pointed  out  vindictively  that  family  livings  were  a 
corrupt  and  indefensible  institution.  Mr.  Grey  replied  calmly 
that  they  probably  were,  but  that  the  fact  did  not  affect,  so  far 
as  he  could  see,  Elsmere's  competence  to  fulfil  all  the  duties  of 
rector  of  Murewell. 

'  After  all,  my  dear  fellow,'  he  said,  a  smile  breaking  over  his 
strong  expressive  face, '  it  is  well  even  for  reformers  to  be  sane.' 

Mrs.  Elsmere  was  passive.  It  seemed  to  her  that  she  had 
foreseen  it  all  along.  She  was  miserable  about  his  health,  but 
she  too  had  a  moment  of  superstition,  and  would  not  urge  him. 
Murewell  was  no  name  of  happy  omen  to  her — she  had  passed 
the  darkest  hours  of  her  life  there. 

In  the  end  Robert  asked  for  delay,  which  was  grudgingly 
granted  him.  Then  he  and  his  mother  and  friend  fled  over 
seas  :  he  feverishly  determined  to  get  well  and  cheat  the  fates. 
But,  after  a  halcyon  time  in  Palestine  and  Constantinople,  a 
whiff  of  poisoned  air  at  Cannes,  on  their  way  home,  acting  on  a 
low  constitutional  state,  settled  matters.  Robert  was  laid  up 
for  weeks  with  malarious  fever,  and  when  he  struggled  out 
again  into  the  hot  Riviera  sunshine  it  was  clear  to  himself  and 
everybody  else  that  he  must  do  what  he  could,  and  not  what  he 
would,  in  the  Christian  vineyard. 

'  Mother,'  he  said  one  day,  suddenly  looking  up  at  her  as  she 
sat  near  him  working,  '  can  you  be  happy  at  Murewell  ? ' 

There  was  a  wistfulness  in  the  long  thin  face,  and  a  pathetic 
accent  of  surrender  in  the  voice,  which  hurt  the  mother's 
heart. 


70  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

'  I  can  be  happy  wherever  you  are,'  she  said,  laying  her  brown 
nervous  hand  on  his  blanched  one. 

'  Then  give  me  pen  and  paper  and  let  me  write  to  Mowbray. 
I  wonder  whether  the  place  has  changed  at  all.  Heigh  ho  ! 
How  is  one  to  preach  to  people  who  have  stuffed  you  up  with 
gooseberries,  or  swung  you  on  gates,  or  lifted  you  over  puddles 
to  save  your  petticoats?  1  wonder  what  has  become  of  that 
boy  whom  I  hit  in  the  eye  with  my  bow  and  arrow,  or  of  that 
other  lout  who  pummelled  me  into  the  middle  of  next  week  for 
disturbing  his  bird-trap  ?  By  the  way,  is  the  Squire — is  Roger 
Wendover — living  at  the  Hall  now  1 ' 

He  turned  to  his  mother  with  a  sudden  start  of  interest. 

'So  I  hear,'  said  Mrs.  Elsmere  drily.  'He  won't  be  much 
good  to  you.' 

He  sat  on  meditating  while  she  went  for  pen  and  paper.  He 
had  forgotten  the  Squire  of  Murewell.  But  Roger  Wendover, 
the  famous  and  eccentric  owner  of  Murewell  Hall,  hermit  and 
scholar,  possessed  of  one  of  the  most  magnificent  libraries  in 
England,  and  author  of  books  which  had  carried  a  revolutionary 
shock  into  the  heart  of  English  society,  was  not  a  figure  to  be 
overlooked  by  any  rector  of  Murewell,  least  of  all  by  one  pos- 
sessed of  Robert's  culture  and  imagination. 

The  young  man  ransacked  his  memory  on  the  subject  with  a 
sudden  access  of  interest  in  his  new  home  that  was  to  be. 

Six  weeks  later  they  were  in  England,  and  Robert,  now  con- 
valescent, had  accepted  an  invitation  to  spend  a  month  in  Long 
Whindale  with  his  mother's  cousins,  the  Thornburghs,  who 
offered  him  quiet,  and  bracing  air.  He  was  to  enter  on  his 
duties  at  Murewell  in  July,  the  bishop,  who  had  been  made 
aware  of  his  Oxford  reputation,  welcoming  the  new  recruit  to 
the  diocese  with  marked  warmth  of  manner. 


CHAPTER  VI 

4  AGNES,  if  you  want  any  tea,  here  it  is,'  cried  Rose,  calling  from 
outside  through  the  dining-room  window  ;  '  and  tell  mamma.' 

It  was  the  first  of  June,  and  the  spell  of  warmth  in  which 
Robert  Elsmere  had  arrived  was  still  maintaining  itself.  An 
intelligent  foreigner  dropped  into  the  flower-sprinkled  valley 
might  have  believed  that,  after  all,  England,  and  even  Northern 
England,  had  a  summer.  Early  in  the  season  as  it  was,  the  sun 
was  already  drawing  the  colour  out  of  the  hills ;  the  young 
green,  hardly  a  week  or  two  old,  was  darkening.  Except  the 
oaks.  They  were  brilliance  itself  against  the  luminous  gray- 
blue  sky.  So  were  the  beeches,  their  young  downy  leaves  just 
unpacked,  tumbling  loosely  open  to  the  light.  But  the  larches 
and  the  birches  and  the  hawthorns  were  already  sobered  by  a 
longer  acquaintance  with  life  and  Phoebus. 


CHAP,  vi  WESTMORELAND  71 

Rose  sat  fanning  herself  with  a  portentous  hat,  which  when 
in  its  proper  place  served  her,  apparently,  both  as  hat  and  as 
parasol.  She  seemed  to  have  been  running  races  with  a  fine 
collie,  who  lay  at  her  feet  panting,  but  studying  her  with  his 
bright  eyes,  and  evidently  ready  to  be  off  again  at  the  first  in- 
dication that  his  playmate  had  recovered  her  wind.  Chattie 
was  coming  lazily  over  the  lawn,  stretching  each  leg  behind  her 
as  she  walked,  tail  arched,  green  eyes  flaming  in  the  sun,  a 
model  of  treacherous  beauty. 

'  Chattie,  you  fiend,  come  here ! '  cried  Hose,  holding  out  a 
hand  to  her ;  '  if  Miss  Barks  were  ever  pretty  she  must  have 
looked  like  you  at  this  moment.' 

'I  won't  have  Chattie  put  upon,'  said  Agnes,  establishing 
herself  at  the  other  side  of  the  little  tea-table  ;  '  she  has  done 
you  no  harm.  Come  to  me,  beastie.  /  won't  compare  you  to 
disagreeable  old  maids.' 

The  cat  looked  from  one  sister  to  the  other,  blinking  ;  then 
with  a  sudden  magnificent  spring  leaped  on  to  Agnes's  lap  and 
curled  herself  up  there. 

'  Nothing  but  cupboard  love,'  said  Rose  scornfully,  in  answer 
to  Agnes's  laugh ;  '  she  knows  you  will  give  her  bread  and 
butter  and  I  won't,  out  of  a  double  regard  for  my  skirts  and  her 
morals.  Oh,  dear  me !  Miss  Barks  was  quite  seraphic  last 
night ;  she  never  made  a  single  remark  about  my  clothes,  and 
she  didn't  even  say  to  me  as  she  generally  does,  with  an  air  of 
compassion,  that  she  "  quite  understands  how  hard  it  must  be  to 
keep  in  tune." ' 

'  The  amusing  thing  was  Mrs.  Seaton  and  Mr.  Elsmere,'  said 
Agnes.  'I  just  love,  as  Mrs.  Thornburgh  says,  to  hear  her  in- 
structing other  people  in  their  own  particular  trades.  She 
didn't  get  much  change  out  of  him.' 

Rose  gave  Agnes  her  tea,  and  then,  bending  forward,  with 
one  hand  on  her  heart,  said  in  'a  stage  whisper,  with  a 
dramatic  glance  round  the  garden,  '  My  heart  is  whole.  How 
is  yours  ? ' 

'  Intact]  said  Agnes  calmly,  '  as  that  French  bric-a-brac  man 
in  the  Brompton  Road  used  to  say  of  his  pots.  But  he  is  very 
nice.' 

'  Oh,  charming  !  But  when  my  destiny  arrives ' — and  Rose, 
returning  to  her  tea,  swept  her  little  hand  with  a  teaspoon  in 
it  eloquently  round — '  he  won't  have  his  hair  cut  close.  I  must 
have  luxuriant  locks,  and  I  will  take  no  excuse  !  Une  chevelwe 
de  poete,  the  eve  of  an  eagle,  the  moustache  of  a  hero,  the  hand 
of  a  Rubinstein,  and,  if  it  pleases  him,  the  temper  of  a  fiend. 
He  will  be  odious,  insufferable  for  all  the  world  besides,  except 
for  me  ;  and  for  me  he  will  be  heaven.' 

She  threw  herself  back,  a  twinkle  in  her  bright  eye,  but  a 
little  flush  of  something  half  real  on  her  cheek. 

'No  doubt,'  said  Agnes  drily.  'But  you  can't  wonder  if 
under  the  circumstances  I  don't  pine  for  a  brother-in-law.  To 


72  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

return  to  the  subject,  however,  Catherine  liked  him.  She 
said  so.' 

'  Oh,  that  doesn't  count,'  replied  Rose  discontentedly  ;  '  Cath- 
erine likes  everybody — of  a  certain  sort — and  everybody  likes 
Catherine.' 

'  Does  that  mean,  Miss  Hasty,'  said  her  sister,  '  that  you  have 
made  up  your  mind  Catherine  will  never  marry  ? ' 

'  Marry  ! '  cried  Rose.  '  You  might  as  well  talk  of  marrying 
Westminster  Abbey.' 

Agnes  looked  at  her  attentively.  Rose's  fun  had  a  decided 
lack  of  sweetness.  '  After  all,'  she  said  demurely, '  St.  Elizabeth 
married.' 

'Yes,  but  then  she  was  a  princess.  Reasons  of  State.  If 
Catherine  were  "  her  Royal  Highness  "  it  would  be  her  duty  to 
marry,  which  would  just  make  all  the  difference.  Duty !  I 
hate  the  word.' 

And  Rose  took  up  a  fir-cone  lying  near  and  threw  it  at  the 
nose  of  the  collie,  who  made  a  jump  at  it,  and  then  resumed  an 
attitude  of  blinking  and  dignified  protest  against  his  mistress's 
follies. 

Agnes  again  studied  her  sister.  '  What's  the  matter  with  you, 
Rose?' 

'  The  usual  thing,  my  dear,'  replied  Rose  curtly,  '  only  more 
so.  I  had  a  letter  this  morning  from  Carry  Ford — the  daughter, 
you  know,  of  those  nice  people  I  stayed  in  Manchester  with  last 
year.  Well,  she  wants  me  to  go  and  stay  the  winter  with  them 
and  study  under  a  first-rate  man,  Franzen,  who  is  to  be  in 
Manchester  two  days  a  week  during  the  winter.  I  haven't  said 
a  word  about  it^- what's  the  use  ?  I  know  all  Catherine's  argu- 
ments by  heart.  Manchester  is  not  Whindale,  and  papa  wished 
us  to  live  in  Whindale ;  I  am  not  somebody  else  and  needn't 
earn  my  bread  ;  and  art  is  jnot  religion  ;  and 

'  Wheels  ! '  exclaimed  Agnes.  '  Catherine,  I  suppose,  home 
from  Whinborough.' 

Rose  got  up  and  peered  through  the  rhododendron  bushes  at 
the  top  of  the  wall  which  shut  them  off  from  the  road. 

'  Catherine,  and  an  unknown.  Catherine  driving  at  a  foot's 
pace,  and  the  unknown  walking  beside  her.  Oh,  I  see,  of  course 
— Mr.  Elsmere.  He  will  come  in  to  tea,  so  I'll  go  for  a  cup.  It 
is  his  duty  to  call  on  us  to-day.' 

When  Rose  came  back  in  the  wake  of  her  mother,  Catherine 
and  Robert  Elsmere  were  coming  up  the  drive.  Something  had 
given  Catherine  more  colour  than  usual,  and  as  Mrs.  Ley  burn 
shook  hands  with  the  young  clergyman  her  mother's  eyes  turned 
approvingly  to  her  eldest  daughter.  '  After  all,  she  is  as  hand- 
some as  Rose,'  she  said  to  herself — '  though  it  is  quite  a  different 
style.' 

Rose,  who  was  always  tea  -  maker,  dispensed  her  wares  ; 
Catherine  took  her  favourite  low  seat  beside  her  mother,  clasp- 
ing Mrs.  Leyburn's  thin  mittened  hand  awhile  tenderly  in  her 


CHAP,  vi  WESTMORELAND  73 

own:  Robert  and  Agnes  set  up  a  lively  gossip  on  the  subject  of 
the  Thornburghs'  guests,  in  which  Rose  joined,  while  Catherine 
looked  smiling  on.  She  seemed  apart  from  the  rest,  Robert 
thought ;  not,  clearly,  by  her  own  will,  but  by  virtue  of  a  differ- 
ence of  temperament  which  could  not  but  make  itself  felt.  Yet 
once  as  Rose  passed  her,  Robert  saw  her  stretch  out  her  hand 
and  touch  her  sister  caressingly,  with  a  bright  upward  look  and 
smile  as  though  she  would  say,  '  Is  all  well  ?  have  you  had  a 
good  time  this  afternoon,  Roschen  ? '  Clearly  the  strong  con- 
templative nature  was  not  strong  enough  to  dispense  with  any 
of  the  little  wants  and  cravings  of  human  affection.  Compared 
to  the  main  impression  she  was  making  on  him,  her  suppliant 
attitude  at  her  mother's  feet  and  her  caress  of  her  sister  were 
like  flowers  breaking  through  the  stern  March  soil  and  changing 
the  whole  spirit  of  the  fields. 

Presently  he  said  something  of  Oxford,  and  mentioned 
Merton.  Instantly  Mrs.  Leyburn  fell  upon  him.  Had  he  ever 
seen  Mr.  S who  had  been  a  Fellow  there,  and  Rose's  god- 
father ? 

'I  don't  acknowledge  him,'  said  Rose,  pouting.  'Other 
people's  godfathers  give  them  mugs  and  corals.  Mine  never 
gave  me  anything  but  a  Concordance.' 

Robert  laughed,  and  proved  to  their  satisfaction  that  Mr. 
-  had  been  extinct  before  his  day.  But  could  they  ask 
him  any  other  questions  ?  Mrs.  Leyburn  became  quite  ani- 
mated, and,  diving  into  her  memory,  produced  a  number  of 
fragmentary  reminiscences  of  her  husband's  Queen's  friends, 
asking  him  for  information  about  each  and  all  of  them.  The 
young  man  disentangled  all  her  questions,  racked  his  brains  to 
answer,  and  showed  all  through  a  quick  friendliness,  a  charming 
deference  as  of  youth  to  age,  which  confirmed  the  liking  of  the 
whole  party  for  him.  Then  the  mention  of  an  associate  of 
Richard  Leyburn's  youth,  who  had  been  one  of  the  Tractarian 
leaders,  led  him  into  talk  of  Oxford  changes  and  the  influences 
of  the  present.  He  drew  for  them  the  famous  High  Church 
preacher  of  the  moment,  described  the  great  spectacle  of  his 
Bampton  Lectures,  by  which  Oxford  had  been  recently  thrilled, 
and  gave  a  dramatic  account  of  a  sermon  on  evolution  preached 
by  the  hermit- veteran  Pusey,  as  though  by  another  Elias  re- 
turning to  the  world  to  deliver  a  last  warning  message  to  men. 
Catherine  listened  absorbed,  her  deep  eyes  fixed  upon  him.  And 
though  all  he  said  was  pitched  in  a  vivacious  narrative  key 
and  addressed  as  much  to  the  others  as  to  her,  inwardly  it 
seemed  to  him  that  his  one  object  all  through  was  to  touch  and 
keep  her  attention. 

Then,  in  answer  to  inquiries  about  himself,  he  fell  to  describ- 
ing St.  Anselm's  with  enthusiasm, — its  growth,  its  Provost,  its 
effectiveness  as  a  great  educational  machine,  the  impression  it 
had  made  on  Oxford  and  the  country.  This  led  him  naturally 
to  talk  of  Mr.  Grey,  then,  next  to  the  Provost,  the  most  promi- 


74  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

nent  figure  in  the  college  ;  and  once  embarked  on  this  theme  he 
became  more  eloquent  and  interesting  than  ever.  The  circle  of 
women  listened  to  him  as  to  a  voice  from  the  large  world.  He 
made  them  feel  the  beat  of  the  great  currents  of  English  life 
and  thought ;  he  seemed  to  bring  the  stir  and  rush  of  our  central 
English  society  into  the  deep  quiet  of  their  valley.  Even  the 
bright-haired  Rose,  idly  swinging  her  pretty  foot,  with  a  head 
full  of  dreams  and  discontent,  was  beguiled,  and  for  the  moment 
seemed  to  lose  her  restless  self  in  listening. 

He  told  an  exciting  story  of  a  bad  election  riot  in  Oxford 
which  had  been  quelled  at  considerable  personal  risk  by  Mr. 
Grey,  who  had  gained  his  influence  in  the  town  by  a  devotion 
of  years  to  the  policy  of  breaking  down  as  far  as  possible  the  old 
venomous  feud  between  city  and  university. 

When  he  paused,  Mrs.  Leyburn  said,  vaguely,  'Did  you  say 
he  was  a  canon  of  somewhere  ? ' 

'  Oh  no,'  said  Robert,  smiling,  '  he  is  not  a  clergyman.' 

'  But  you  said  he  preached,'  said  Agnes. 

'  Yes — but  lay  sermons — addresses.  He  is  not  one  of  us  even, 
according  to  your  standard  and  mine.' 

'  A  Nonconformist  ? '  sighed  Mrs.  Leyburn.  '  Oh,  I  know 
they  have  let  in  everybody  now.' 

'  Well,  if  you  like,'  said  Robert.  '  What  I  meant  was  that  his 
opinions  are  not  orthodox.  He  could  not  be  a  clergyman,  but 
he  is  one  of  the  noblest  of  men  ! ' 

He  spoke  with  affectionate  warmth.  Then  suddenly  Cath- 
erine's eyes  met  his,  and  he  felt  an  involuntary  start.  A  veil 
had  fallen  over  them ;  her  sweet  moved  sympathy  was  gone ; 
she  seemed  to  have  shrunk  into  herself. 

She  turned  to  Mrs.  Leyburn.  '  Mother,  do  you  know,  I  have 
all  sorts  of  messages  from  Aunt  Ellen ' — and  in  an  under- voice 
she  began  to  give  Mrs.  Leyburn  the  news  of  her  afternoon 
expedition. 

Rose  and  Agnes  soon  plunged  young  Elsmere  into  another 
stream  of  talk.  But  he  kept  his  feeling  of  perplexity.  His 
experience  of  other  women  seemed  to  give  him  nothing  to  go 
upon  with  regard  to  Miss  Leyburn. 

Presently  Catherine  got  up  and  drew  her  plain  little  black 
cape  round  her  again. 

'  My  dear  ! '  remonstrated  Mrs.  Leyburn.  '  Where  are  you 
off  to  now  1 ' 

'  To  the  Backhouses,  mother,'  she  said  in  a  low  voice  ;  '  I  have 
not  been  there  for  two  days.  I  must  go  this  evening.' 

Mrs.  Leyburn  said  no  more.  Catherine's  '  musts '  were  never 
disputed.  She  moved  towards  Elsmere  with  outstretched  hand. 
But  he  also  sprang  up. 

'  I,  too,  must  be  going,'  he  said  ;  '  I  have  paid  you  an  uncon- 
scionable visit.  If  you  are  going  past  the  vicarage,  Miss  Ley- 
burn,  may  I  escort  you  so  far  ? ' 

She  stood  quietly  waiting  while  he  made  his  farewells.    Agnes, 


CHAP,  vi  WESTMORELAND  75 

whose  eye  fell  on  her  sister  during  the  pause,  was  struck  with 
a  passing  sense  of  something  out  of  the  common.  She  could 
hardly  have  denned  her  impression,  but  Catherine  seemed  more 
alive  to  the  outer  world,  more  like  other  people,  less  nun-like, 
than  usual. 

When  they  had  left  the  garden  together,  as  they  had  come 
into  it,  and  Mrs.  Leyburn,  complaining  of  chilliness,  had  re- 
treated to  the  drawing-room,  Rose  laid  a  quick  hand  on  her 
sister's  arm. 

'  You  say  Catherine  likes  him  ?  Owl !  what  is  a  great  deal 
more  certain  is  that  he  likes  her.' 

'Well,'  said  Agnes  calmly, — 'well,  I  await  your  remarks.' 

'  Poor  fellow  !    said  Rose  grimly,  and  removed  her  hand. 

Meanwhile  Elsmere  and  Catherine  walked  along  the  valley 
road  towards  the  Vicarage.  He  thought,  uneasily,  she  was  a 
little  more  reserved  with  him  than  she  had  been  in  those  pleasant 
moments  after  he  had  overtaken  her  in  the  pony-carriage  ;  but 
still  she  was  always  kind,  always  courteous.  And  what  a  white 
hand  it  was,  hanging  ungloved  against  her  dress  !  what  a  beauti- 
ful dignity  and  freedom,  as  of  mountain  winds  and  mountain 
streams,  in  every  movement ! 

'You  are  bound  for  High  Ghyll?'  he  said  to  her  as  they 
neared  the  vicarage  gate.  '  Is  it  not  a  long  way  for  you  ?  You 
have  been  at  a  meeting  already,  your  sister  said,  and  teaching 
this  morning  ! ' 

He  looked  down  on  her  with  a  charming  diffidence  as  though 
aware  that  their  acquaintance  was  very  young,  and  yet  with  a 
warm  eagerness  of  feeling  piercing  through.  As  she  paused 
under  his  eye  the  slightest  flush  rose  to  Catherine's  cheek. 
Then  she  looked  up  with  a  smile.  It  was  amusing  to  be  taken 
care  of  by  this  tall  stranger  ! 

'  It  is  most  unfeminine,  I  am  afraid,'  she  said,  '  but  I  couldn't 
be  tired  if  I  tried.' 

Elsmere  grasped  her  hand. 

'You  make  me  feel  myself  more  than  ever  a  shocking  ex- 
ample,' he  said,  letting  it  go  with  a  little  sigh.  The  smart  of 
his  own  renunciation  was  still  keen  in  him.  She  lingered  a 
moment,  could  find  nothing  to  say,  threw  him  a  look  all  shy 
sympathy  and  lovely  pity,  and  was  gone. 

In  the  evening  Robert  got  an  explanation  of  that  sudden 
stiffening  in  his  auditor  of  the  afternoon,  which  had  perplexed 
him.  He  and  the  vicar  were  sitting  smoking  in  the  study  after 
dinner,  and  the  ingenious  young  man  managed  to  shift  the  con- 
versation on  to  the  Leyburns,  as  he  had  managed  to  shift  it 
once  or  twice  before  that  day,  flattering  himself,  of  course,  on 
each  occasion  that  his  manoeuvres  were  beyond  detection.  The 
vicar,  good  soul,  by  virtue  of  his  original  discovery,  detected 
them  all,  and  with  a  sense  of  appropriation  in  the  matter,  not 
at  all  unmixed  with  a  sense  of  triumph  over  Mrs.  T.,  kept  the 
ball  rolling  merrily. 


76  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

'Miss  Leyburn  seems  to  have  very  strong  religious  views,' 
said  Robert,  a  propos  of  some  remark  of  the  vicar's  as  to  the 
assistance  she  was  to  him  in  the  school. 

'  Ah,  she  is  her  father's  daughter,'  said  the  vicar  genially.  He 
had  his  oldest  coat  on,  his  favourite  pipe  between  his  lips,  and 
a  bit  of  domestic  carpentering  on  his  knee  at  which  he  was 
fiddling  away ;  and,  being  perfectly  happy,  was  also  perfectly 
amiable.  'Richard  Leyburn  was  a  fanatic — as  mild  as  you 
please,  but  immovable.' 
'  'What  line?' 

'  Evangelical,  with  a  dash  of  Quakerism.  He  lent  me  Madame 
Guyon's  Life  once  to  read.  I  didn't  appreciate  it.  I  told  him 
that  for  all  her  religion  she  seemed  to  me  to  have  a  deal  of  the 
vixen  in  her.  He  could  hardly  get  over  it :  it  nearly  broke  our 
friendship.  But  I  suppose  he  was  very  like  her,  except  that, 
in  my  opinion,  his  nature  was  sweeter.  He  was  a  fatalist — saw 
leadings  of  Providence  in  every  little  thing.  And  such  a  dreamer ! 
When  he  came  to  live  up  here  just  before  his  death,  and  all  his 
active  life  was  taken  off  him,  I  believe  half  his  time  he  was  see- 
ing visions.  He  used  to  wander  over  the  fells  and  meet  you 
with  a  start,  as  though  you  belonged  to  another  world  than  the 
one  he  was  walking  in.' 

'  And  his  eldest  daughter  was  much  with  him  ? ' 

'  The  apple  of  his  eye.  She  understood  him.  He  could  talk 
his  soul  out  to  her.  The  others,  of  course,  were  children ;  and 
his  wife — well,  his  wife  was  just  what  you  see  her  now,  poor 
thing.  He  must  have  married  her  when  she  was  very  young 
and  very  pretty.  She  was  a  squire's  daughter  somewhere 
near  the  school  of  which  he  was  master — a  good  family,  I  be- 
lieve— she'll  tell  you  so,  in  a  ladylike  way.  He  was  always 
fidgety  about  her  health.  He  loved  her,  I  suppose,  or  had  loved 
her.  But  it  was  Catherine  who  had  his  mind  ;  Catherine  who 
was  his  friend.  She  adored  him.  I  believe  there  was  always  a 
sort  of  pity  in  her  heart  for  him  too.  But  at  any  rate  he  made 
her  and  trained  her.  He  poured  all  his  ideas  and  convictions 
into  her.' 

'  Which  were  strong  1 ' 

'  Uncommonly.  For  all  his  gentle,  ethereal  look,  you  could 
neither  bend  nor  break  him.  I  don't  believe  anybody  but 
Richard  Leyburn  could  have  gone  through  Oxford  at  the  height 
of  the  Oxford  Movement,  and,  so  to  speak,  have  known  nothing 
about  it,  while  living  all  the  time  for  religion.  He  had  a  great 
deal  in  common  with  the  Quakers,  as  I  said ;  a  great  deal  in 
common  with  the  Wesley ans ;  but  he  was  very  loyal  to  the 
Church  all  the  same.  He  regarded  it  as  the  golden  mean. 
George  Herbert  was  his  favourite  poet.  He  used  to  carry  his 
poems  about  with  him  on  the  mountains,  and  an  expurgated 
Christian  Year — the  only  thing  he  ever  took  from  the  High 
Churchmen — which  he  had  made  for  himself,  and  which  he  and 
Catherine  knew  by  heart.  In  some  ways  he  was  not  a  bigot  at 


CHAP,  vi  WESTMORELAND  77 

all.  He  would  have  had  the  Church  make  peace  with  the  Dis- 
senters ;  he  was  all  for  upsetting  tests  so  far  as  Nonconformity 
was  concerned.  But  he  drew  the  most  rigid  line  between  belief 
and  unbelief.  He  would  not  have  dined  at  the  same  table  with 
a  Unitarian  if  he  could  have  helped  it.  I  remember  a  furious 
article  of  Ms  in  the  Record  against  admitting  Unitarians  to  the 
Universities  or  allowing  them  to  sit  in  Parliament.  England  is 
a  Christian  State,  he  said  ;  they  are  not  Christians ;  they  have 
no  right  in  her  except  on  sufferance.  Well,  I  suppose  he  was 
abou  t  right,'  said  the  vicar  with  a  sigh.  '  We  are  all  so  half- 
hearted nowadays.' 

'Not  he,'  cried  Robert  hotly.  'Who  are  we  that  because  a 
man  differs  from  us  in  opinion  we  are  to  shut  him  out  from  the 
education  of  political  and  civil  duty  ?  But  never  mind,  Cousin 
William.  Go  on.' 

'There's  no  more  that  I  remember,  except  that  of  course 
Catherine  took  all  these  ideas  from  him.  He  wouldn't  let  his  child- 
ren know  any  unbeliever,  however  apparently  worthy  and  good. 
He  impressed  it  upon  them  as  their  special  sacred  duty,  in  a 
time  of  wicked  enmity  to  religion,  to  cherish  the  faith  and  the 
whole  faith.  He  wished  his  wife  and  daughters  to  live  on  here 
after  his  death  that  they  might  be  less  in  danger  spiritually 
than  in  the  big  world,  and  that  they  might  have  more  oppor- 
tunity of  living  the  old-fashioned  Christian  life.  There  was  also 
some  mystical  idea,  I  think,  of  making  up  through  his  children 
for  the  godless  lives  of  their  forefathers.  He  used  to  reproach 
himself  for  having  in  his  prosperous  days  neglected  his  family, 
some  of  whom  he  might  have  helped  to  raise.' 

'  Well,  but,'  said  Robert,  '  all  very  well  for  Miss  Leyburn,  but 
I  don't  see  the  father  in  the  two  younger  girls.' 

'  Ah,  there  is  Catherine's  difficulty,'  said  the  vicar,  shrugging 
his  shoulders.  '  Poor  thing  !  How  well  I  remember  her  after 
her  father's  death  !  She  came  down  to  see  me  in  the  dining- 
room  about  some  arrangement  for  the  funeral.  She  was  only 
sixteen,  so  pale  and  thin  with  nursing.  I  said  something  about 
the  comfort  she  had  been  to  her  father.  She  took  my  hand  and 
burst  into  tears.  " He  was  so  good  ! "  she  said  ;  "I  loved  him 
so  !  Oh,  Mr.  Thornburgh,  help  me  to  look  after  the  others  ! " 
And  that's  been  her  one  thought  since  then  —  that,  next  to 
following  the  narrow  road.' 

The  vicar  had  begun  to  speak  with  emotion,  as  generally 
happened  to  him  whenever  he  was  beguiled  into  much  speech 
about  Catherine  Leyburn.  There  must  have  been  something 
great  somewhere  in  the  insignificant  elderly  man.  A  meaner 
soul  might  so  easily  have  been  jealous  of  this  girl  with  her  in- 
conveniently high  standards,  and  her  influence,  surpassing  his 
own,  in  his  own  domain. 

'  I  should  like  to  know  the  secret  of  the  little  musician's  inde 
pendence,'  said  Robert,  musing.  'There  might  be  no  tie  of 
mood  at  all  between  her  and  the  elder,  so  far  as  I  can  see.' 


78  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

'  Oh,  I  don't  know  that !  There's  more  than  you  think,  or 
Catherine  wouldn't  have  kept  her  hold  over  her  so  far  as  she 
has.  Generally  she  gets  her  way,  except  about  the  music.  There 
Rose  sticks  to  it.' 

'  And  why  shouldn't  she  ? ' 

'Ah,  well,  you  see,  my  dear  fellow,  I  am  old  enough,  and 
you're  not,  to  remember  what  people  in  the  old  days  used  to 
think  about  art.  Of  course  nowadays  we  all  say  very  fine  things 
about  it ;  but  Richard  Leyburn  would  no  more  have  admitted 
that  a  girl  who  hadn't  got  her  own  bread  or  her  family's  to  earn 
by  it  was  justified  in  spending  her  time  in  fiddling  than  he 
would  have  approved  of  her  spending  it  in  dancing.  I  have 
heard  him  take  a  text  out  of  the  Imitation  and  lecture  Rose 
when  she  was  quite  a  baby  for  pestering  any  stray  person  she 
could  get  hold  of  to  give  her  music-lessons.  "  Woe  to  them  "- 
yes,  that  was  it — "that  inquire  many  curious  things  of  men, 
and  care  little  about  the  way  of  serving  me."  However,  he 
wasn't  consistent.  Nobody  is.  It  was  actually  he  that  brought 
Rose  her  first  violin  from  London  in  a  green  baize  bag.  Mrs. 
Leyburn  took  me  in  one  night  to  see  her  asleep  with  it  on  her 
pillow,  and  all  her  pretty  curls  lying  over  the  strings.  I  dare- 
say, poor  man,  it  was  one  of  the  acts  towards  his  children  that 
tormented  his  mind  in  his  last  hour.' 

'  She  has  certainly  had  her  way  about  practising  it :  she  plays 
superbly.' 

'  Oh  yes,  she  has  had  her  way.  She  is  a  queer  mixture,  is 
Rose.  1  see  a  touch  of  the  old  Leyburn  recklessness  in  her ; 
and  then  there  is  the  beauty  and  refinement  of  her  mother's 
side  of  the  family.  Lately  she  has  got  quite  out  of  hand.  She 
went  to  stay  with  some  relations  they  have  in  Manchester,  got 
drawn  into  the  musical  set  there,  took  to  these  funny  gowns, 
and  now  she  and  Catherine  are  always  half  at  war.  Poor 
Catherine  said  to  me  the  other  day,  with  tears  in  her  eyes,  that 
she  knew  Rose  thought  her  as  hard  as  iron.  "  But  what  can  I 
do  ? "  she  said.  "  I  promised  papa."  She  makes  herself  miser- 
able, and  it's  no  use.  I  wish  the  little  wild  thing  would  get  her- 
self well  married.  She's  not  meant  for  this  humdrum  place,  and 
she  may  kick  over  the  traces.' 

'  She's  pretty  enough  for  anything  and  anybody,'  said  Robert. 

The  vicar  looked  at  him  sharply,  but  the  young  man's  critical 
and  meditative  look  reassured  him. 

The  next  day,  just  before  early  dinner,  Rose  and  Agnes,  who 
had  been  for  a  walk,  were  startled,  as  they  were  turning  into 
their  own  gate,  by  the  frantic  waving  of  a  white  handkerchief 
from  the  vicarage  garden.  It  was  Mrs.  Thornburgh's  accepted 
way  of  calling  the  attention  of  the  Burwood  inmates,  and  the 
girls  walked  on.  They  found  the  good  lady  waiting  for  them  in 
the  drive  in  a  characteristic  glow  and  nutter. 

'  My  dears,  I  have  been  looking  out  for  you  all  the  morning  ! 
I  should  have  come  over  but  for  the  stores  coming,  and  a  tire- 


CHAP.  vi  WESTMORELAND  79 

some  man  from  Randall's.  I've  had  to  bargain  with  him  for  a 
whole  hour  about  taking  back  those  sweets.  I  was  swindled,  of 
course,  but  we  should  have  died  if  we'd  had  to  eat  them  up. 
Well,  now,  my  dears -' 

The  vicar's  wife  paused.  Her  square  short  figure  was  be- 
tween the  two  girls ;  she  had  an  arm  of  each,  and  she  looked 
significantly  from  one  to  another,  her  gray  curls  flapping  across 
her  face  as  she  did  so. 

'  Go  on,  Mrs.  Thornburgh,'  cried  Rose.  '  You  make  us  quite 
nervous.' 

'  How  do  you  like  Mr.  Elsmere  ? '  she  inquired  solemnly. 

'  Very  much,'  said  both  in  chorus. 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  surveyed  Rose's  smiling  frankness  with  a 
little  sigh.  Things  were  going  grandly,  but  she  could  imagine 
a  disposition  of  affairs  which  would  have  given  her  personally 
more  pleasure. 

'  How — would — you — like, — him  for  a  brother-in-law  1 '  she  in- 
quired, beginning  in  a  whisper,  with  slow  emphasis,  patting 
Rose's  arm,  and  bringing  out  the  last  words  with  a  rush. 

Agnes  caught  the  twinkle  in  Rose's  eye,  but  she  answered  for 
them  both  demurely. 

'  We  have  no  objection  to  entertain  the  idea.  But  you  must 
explain.' 

'  Explain ! '  cried  Mrs.  Thornburgh.  '  I  should  think  it 
explains  itself.  At  least  if  you'd  been  in  this  house  the  last 
twenty-four  hours  you'd  think  so.  Since  the  moment  when  he 
first  met  her,  it's  been  "  Miss  Leyburn,"  "  Miss  Leyburn,"  all  the 
time.  One  might  have  seen  it  with  half  an  eye  from  the 
beginning.' 

Airs.  Thornburgh  had  not  seen  it  with  two  eyes,  as  we  know, 
till  it  was  pointed  out  to  her  ;  but  her  imagination  worked  with 
equal  liveliness  backwards  or  forwards. 

'He  went  to  see  you  yesterday,  didn't  he — yes,  I  know  he 
did — and  he  overtook  her  in  the  pony-carriage — the  vicar  saw 
them  from  across  the  valley — and  he  brought  her  back  from  your 
house,  and  then  he  kept  William  up  till  nearly  twelve  talking 
of  her.  And  now  he  wants  a  picnic.  Oh,  it's  as  plain  as  a  pike- 
staff. And,  my  dears,  not/ting  to  be  said  against  him.  Fifteen 
hundred  a  year  if  he's  a  penny.  A  nice  living,  only  his  mother 
to  look  after,  and  as  good  a  young  fellow  as  ever  stepped.' 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  stopped,  choked  almost  by  her  own  elo- 
quence. The  girls,  who  had  by  this  time  established  her  between 
them  on  a  garden-seat,  looked  at  her  with  smiling  composure. 
They  were  accustomed  to  letting  her  have  her  budget  out. 

'  And  now,  of  course,'  she  resumed,  taking  breath,  and  chilled 
a  little  by  their  silence,  '  now,  of  course,  I  want  to  know  about 
Catherine?'  She  regarded  them  with  anxious  interrogation. 
Rose,  still  smiling,  slowly  shook  her  head. 

'  What ! '  cried  Mrs.  Thornburgh  ;  then,  with  charming  incon- 
sistency, '  oh,  you  can't  know  anything  in  two  days.' 


80  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

'  That's  just  it,'  said  Agnes,  intervening ;  '  we  can't  know  any- 
thing iii  two  days.  No  one  ever  will  know  anything  about 
Catherine,  if  she  takes  to  anybody,  till  the  last  minute.' 

Mrs.  Thornburgh's  face  fell.  '  It's  very  difficult  when  people 
will  be  so  reserved,'  she  said  dolefully. 

The  girls  acquiesced,  but  intimated  that  they  saw  no  way  out 
of  it. 

'  At  any  rate  we  can  bring  them  together,'  she  broke  out, 
brightening  again.  '  We  can  have  picnics,  you  know,  and  teas, 
and  all  that— and  watch.  Now  listen.' 

And  the  vicar's  wife  sketched  out  a  programme  of  festivities 
for  the  next  fortnight  she  had  been  revolving  in  her  inventive 
head,  which  took  the  sisters'  breath  away.  Rose  bit  her  lip  to 
keep  in  her  laughter.  Agnes  with  vast  self-possession  took 
Mrs.  Thornburgh  in  hand.  She  pointed  out  firmly  that  nothing 
would  be  so  likely  to  make  Catherine  impracticable  as  fuss. 
'  In  vain  is  the  net  spread,'  etc.  She  preached  from  the  text 
with  a  worldly  wisdom  which  quickly  crushed  Mrs.  Thorn- 
burgh. 

'  Well,  wliat  am  I  to  do,  my  dears  ? '  she  said  at  last  helplessly. 
'  Look  at  the  weather  !  We  must  have  some  picnics,  if  it's  only 
to  amuse  Robert.' 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  spent  her  life  between  a  condition  of  effer- 
vescence and  a  condition  of  feeling  the  world  too  much  for  her. 
Rose  and  Agnes,  having  now  reduced  her  to  the  latter  state, 
proceeded  cautiously  to  give  her  her  head  again.  They  promised 
her  two  or  three  expeditions  and  one  picnic  at  least ;  they  said 
they  would  do  their  best ;  they  promised  they  would  report 
what  they  saw  and  be  very  discreet,  both  feeling  the  comedy  of 
Mrs.  Thornburgh  as  the  advocate  of  discretion  ;  and  then  they 
departed  to  their  early  dinner,  leaving  the  vicar's  wife  decidedly 
less  self-confident  than  they  found  her. 

'  The  first  matrimonial  excitement  of  the  family,'  cried  Agnes 
as  they  walked  home.  '  So  far  no  one  can  say  the  Miss  Leyburns 
have  been  besieged  ! ' 

'  It  will  be  all  moonshine,'  Rose  replied  decisively.  '  Mr.  Els- 
mere  may  lose  his  heart ;  we  may  aid  and  abet  him ;  Catherine  will 
live  in  the  clouds  for  a  few  weeks,  and  come  down  from  them  at 
the  end  with  the  air  of  an  angel,  to  give  him  his  coup  de  grdce. 
As  I  said  before — poor  fellow  ! 

Agnes  made  no  answer.  She  was  never  so  positive  as  Rose, 
and  on  the  whole  did  not  find  herself  the  worse  for  it  in  life. 
Besides,  she  understood  that  there  was  a  soreness  at  the  bottom 
of  Rose's  heart  that  was  always  showing  itself  in  unexpected 
connections. 

There  was  no  necessity,  indeed,  for  elaborate  schemes  for 
assisting  Providence.  Mrs.  Thornburgh  had  her  picnics  and  her 
expeditions,  but  without  them  Robert  Elsmere  would  have  been 
still  man  enough  to  see  Catherine  Leyburn  every  day.  He 
loitered  about  the  roads  along  which  she  must  needs  pass  to  do 


CHAP,  vi  WESTMORELAND  81 

her  many  offices  of  charity  ;  he  offered  the  vicar  to  take  a  class 
in  the  school,  and  was  naively  exultant  that  the  vicar  curiously 
happened  to  fix  an  hour  when  he  must  needs  see  Miss  Leyburn 
going  or  coming  on  the  same  errand  ;  he  dropped  into  Burwood 
on  any  conceivable  pretext,  till  Rose  and  Agnes  lost  all  incon- 
venient respect  for  his  cloth  and  Mrs.  Leyburn  sent  him  on 
errands ;  and  he  even  insisted  that  Catherine  and  the  vicar 
should  make  use  of  him  and  his  pastoral  services  in  one  or  two 
of  the  cases  of  sickness  or  poverty  under  their  care.  Catherine, 
with  a  little  more  reserve  than  usual,  took  him  one  day  to  the 
Tysons',  and  introduced  him  to  the  poor  crippled  son  who  was 
likely  to  live  on  paralysed  for  some  time,  under  the  weight, 
moreover,  of  a  black  cloud  of  depression  which  seldom  lifted. 
Mrs.  Tyson  kept  her  talking  in  the  roem,  and  she  never  forgot 
the  scene.  It  showed  her  a  new  aspect  of  a  man  whose  intel- 
lectual life  was  becoming  plain  to  her,  while  his  moral  life  was 
still  something  of  a  mystery.  The  look  in  Elsmere's  face  as  he 
sat  bending  over  the  maimed  young  farmer,  the  strength  and 
tenderness  of  the  man,  the  diffidence  of  the  few  religious  things 
he  said,  and  yet  the  reality  and  force  of  them,  struck  her  power- 
fully. He  had  forgotten  her,  forgotten  everything  save  the 
bitter  human  need,  and  the  comfort  it  was  his  privilege  to  offer. 
Catherine  stood  answering  Mrs.  Tyson  at  random,  the  tears 
rising  in  her  eyes.  She  slipped  out  while  he  was  still  talking, 
and  went  home  strangely  moved. 

As  to  the  festivities,  she  did  her  best  to  join  in  them.  The 
sensitive  soul  often  reproached  itself  afterwards  for  having 
juggled  in  the  matter.  Was  it  not  her  duty  to  manage  a  little 
society  and  gaiety  for  her  sisters  sometimes  f  Her  mother  could 
not  undertake  it,  and  was  always  plaintively  protesting  that 
Catherine  would  not  be  young.  So  for  a  short  week  or  two 
Catherine  did  her  best  to  be  young,  and  climbed  the  mountain 
grass,  or  forded  the  mountain  streams  with  the  energy  and  the 
grace  of  perfect  health,  trembling  afterwards  at  night  as  she 
knelt  by  her  window  to  think  how  much  sheer  pleasure  the  day 
had  contained.  Her  life  had  always  had  the  tension  of  a  bent 
bow.  It  seemed  to  her  once  or  twice  during  this  fortnight  as 
though  something  were  suddenly  relaxed  in  her,  and  she  felt  a 
swift  Bunyan-like  terror  of  backsliding,  of  falling  away.  But 
she  never  confessed  herself  fully ;  she  was  even  blind  to  what 
her  perspicacity  would  have  seen  so  readily  in  another's  case — 
the  little  arts  and  manoeuvres  of  those  about  her.  It  did  not 
strike  her  that  Mrs.  Thorn  burgh  was  more  flighty  and  more 
ebullient  than  ever ;  that  the  vicar's  wife  kissed  her  at  odd 
times,  and  with  a  quite  unwonted  effusion  ;  or  that  Agnes  and 
Rose,  when  they  were  in  the  wild  heart  of  the  mountains,  or 
wandering  far  and  wide  in  search  of  sticks  for  a  picnic  fire, 
showed  a  perfect  genius  for  avoiding  Mr.  Elsmere,  whom  both 
of  them  liked,  and  that  in  consequence  his  society  almost  always 
fell  to  her.  Nor  did  she  ever  analyse  what  would  have  been  the 

a 


82  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

attraction  of  those  walks  to  her  without  that  tall  figure  at  her 
side,  that  bounding  step,  that  picturesque  impetuous  talk. 
There  are  moments  when  Nature  throws  a  kind  of  heavenly 
mist  and  dazzlement  round  the  soul  it  would  fain  make  happy. 
The  soul  gropes  blindly  on  ;  if  it  saw  its  way  it  might  be  timid 
and  draw  back,  but  kind  powers  lead  it  genially  onward  through 
a  golden  darkness. 

Meanwhile  if  she  did  not  know  herself,  she  and  Elsmere 
learnt  with  wonderful  quickness  and  thoroughness  to  know 
each  other.  The  two  households  so  near  together,  and  so  isolated 
from  the  world  besides,  were  necessarily  in  constant  communi- 
cation. And  Elsmere  made  a  most  stirring  element  in  their 
common  life.  Never  had  he  been  more  keen,  more  strenuous. 
It  gave  Catherine  new  lights  on  modern  character  altogether 
to  see  how  he  was  preparing  himself  for  this  Surrey  living — 
reading  up  the  history,  geology,  and  botany  of  the  Weald  and 
its  neighbourhood,  plunging  into  reports  of  agricultural  com- 
missions, or  spending  his  quick  brain  on  village  sanitation,  with 
the  oddest  results  sometimes,  so  far  as  his  conversation  was 
concerned.  And  then  in  the  middle  of  his  disquisitions,  which 
would  keep  her  breathless  with  a  sense  of  being  whirled  through 
space  at  the  tail  of  an  electric  kite,  the  kite  would  come  down 
with  a  run,  and  the  preacher  and  reformer  would  come  hat  in 
hand  to  the  girl  beside  him,  asking  her  humbly  to  advise  him, 
to  pour  out  on  him  some  of  that  practical  experience  of  hers 
among  the  poor  and  suffering,  for  the  sake  of  which  he  would 
in  an  instant  scornfully  fling  out  of  sight  all  his  own  magnificent 
plannings.  Never  had  she  told  so  much  of  her  own  life  to  any 
one ;  her  consciousness  of  it  sometimes  filled  her  with  a  sort  of 
terror,  lest  she  might  have  been  trading,  as  it  were,  for  her  own 
advantage  on  the  sacred  things  of  God.  But  he  would  have  it. 
His  sympathy,  his  sweetness,  his  quick  spiritual  feeling  drew 
the  stories  out  of  her.  And  then  how  his  bright  frank  eyes 
would  soften  !  With  what  a  reverence  would  he  touch  her  hand 
when  she  said  good-bye  ! 

And  on  her  side  she  felt  that  she  knew  almost  as  much  about 
Murewell  as  he  did.  She  could  imagine  the  wild  beauty  of  the 
Surrey  heathland,  she  could  see  the  white  square  rectory  with 
its  sloping  walled  garden,  the  juniper  common  just  outside  the 
straggling  village ;  she  could  even  picture  the  strange  squire, 
solitary  in  the  great  Tudor  Hall,  the  author  of  terrible  books 
against  the  religion  of  Christ  of  which  she  shrank  from  hearing, 
and  share  the  anxieties  of  the  young  rector  as  to  his  future 
relations  towards  a  personality  so  marked,  and  so  important  to 
every  soul  in  the  little  community  he  was  called  to  rule.  Here 
all  was  plain  sailing ;  she  understood  him  perfectly,  and  her 
gentle  comments,  or  her  occasional  sarcasms,  were  friendliness 
itself. 

But  it  was  when  he  turned  to  larger  things — to  books,  move- 
ments, leaders  of  the  day — that  she  was  often  puzzled,  sometimes 


CHAP,  vi  WESTMORELAND  83 

distressed.  Why  would  he  seem  to  exalt  and  glorify  rebellion 
against  the  established  order  in  the  person  of  Mr.  Grey  ?  Or 
why,  ardent  as  his  own  faith  was,  would  he  talk  as  though 
opinion  was  a  purely  personal  matter,  hardly  in  itself  to  be 
made  the  subject  of  moral  judgment  at  all,  and  as  though  right 
belief  were  a  blessed  privilege  and  boon  rather  than  a  law  and 
an  obligation?  When  his  comments  on  men  and  things  took 
this  tinge,  she  would  turn  silent,  feeling  a  kind  of  painful 
opposition  between  his  venturesome  speech  and  his  clergyman's 
dress. 

And  yet,  as  we  all  know,  these  ways  of  speech  were  not  his 
own.  He  was  merely  talking  the  natural  Christian  language  of 
this  generation ;  whereas  she,  the  child  of  a  mystic — solitary, 
intense,  and  deeply  reflective  from  her  earliest  youth — was  still 
thinking  and  speaking  in  the  language  of  her  father's  genera- 
tion. 

But  although,  as  often  as  his  unwariness  brought  him  near 
to  these  points  of  jarring,  he  would  hurry  away  from  them, 
conscious  that  here  was  the  one  profound  difference  between 
them,  it  was  clear  to  him  that  insensibly  she  had  moved  further 
than  she  knew  from  her  father's  standpoint.  Even  among  these 
solitudes,  far  from  men  and  literature,  she  had  unconsciously 
felt  the  breath  of  her  time  in  some  degree.  As  he  penetrated 
deeper  into  the  nature  he  found  it  honeycombed,  as  it  were, 
here  and  there,  with  beautiful  unexpected  softnesses  and  diffi- 
dences. Once,  after  a  long  walk,  as  they  were  lingering  home- 
wards under  a  cloudy  evening  sky,  he  came  upon  the  great 
problem  of  her  life — Rose  and  Rose's  art.  He  drew  her  difficulty 
from  her  with  the  most  delicate  skill.  She  had  laid  it  bare,  and 
was  blushing  to  think  how  she  had  asked  his  counsel,  almost 
before  she  knew  where  their  talk  was  leading.  How  was  it 
lawful  for  the  Christian  to  spend  the  few  short  years  of  the 
earthly  combat  in  any  pursuit,  however  noble  and  exquisite, 
which  merely  aimed  at  the  gratification  of  the  senses,  and  im- 
plied in  the  pursuer  the  emphasising  rather  than  the  surrender 
of  self? 

He  argued  it  very  much  as  Kingsley  would  have  argued  it, 
tried  to  lift  her  to  a  more  intelligent  view  of  a  multifarious 
world,  dwelling  on  the  function  of  pure  beauty  in  life,  and  on 
the  influence  of  beauty  on  character,  pointing  out  the  value  to 
the  race  of  all  individual  development,  and  pressing  home  on 
her  the  natural  religious  question :  How  are  the  artistic  apti- 
tudes to  be  explained  unless  the  Great  Designer  meant  them  to 
have  a  use  and  function  in  His  world  1  She  replied  doubtfully 
that  she  had  always  supposed  they  were  lawful  for  recreation, 
and  like  any  other  trade  for  bread-winning,  but 

Then  he  told  her  much  that  he  knew  about  the  humanising 
effect  of  music  on  the  poor.  He  described  to  her  the  efforts  of 
a  London  society,  of  which  he  was  a  subscribing  member,  to 
popularise  the  best  music  among  the  lowest  class ;  he  dwelt 


84  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

almost  with  passion  on  the  difference  between  the  joy  to  be  got 
out  of  such  things  and  the  common  brutalising  joys  of  the 
workman.  And  you  could  not  have  art  without  artists.  In 
this  again  he  was  only  talking  the  commonplaces  of  his  day. 
But  to  her  they  were  not  commonplaces  at  all.  She  looked  at 
him  from  time  to  time,  her  great  eyes  lightening  and  deepening 
as  it  seemed  with  every  fresh  thrust  of  his. 

'  I  am  grateful  to  you,'  she  said  at  last  with  an  involuntary 
outburst,  'I  am  very  grateful  to  you  !' 

And  she  gave  a  long  sigh  as  if  some  burden  she  had  long 
borne  in  patient  silence  had  been  loosened  a  little,  if  only  by  the 
fact  of  speech  about  it.  She  was  not  convinced  exactly.  She 
was  too  strong  a  nature  to  relinquish  a  principle  without  a 
period  of  meditative  struggle  in  which  conscience  should  have 
all  its  dues.  But  her  tone  made  his  heart  leap.  He  felt  in  it  a 
momentary  self -surrender  that,  coming  from  a  creature  of  so 
rare  a  dignity,  filled  him  with  an  exquisite  sense  of  power,  and 
yet  at  the  same  time  with  a  strange  humility  beyond  words. 

A  day  or  two  later  he  was  the  spectator  of  a  curious  little 
scene.  An  aunt  of  the  Leyburns  living  in  Whinborough  came 
to  see  them.  She  was  their  father's  youngest  sister,  and  the 
wife  of  a  man  who  had  made  some  money  as  a  builder  in  Whin- 
borough.  When  Robert  came  in  he  found  her  sitting  on  the 
sofa  having  tea,  a  large  homely-looking  woman  with  gray  hair, 
a  high  brow,  and  prominent  white  teeth.  She  had  unfastened 
her  bonnet  strings,  and  a  clean  white  handkerchief  lay  spread 
out  on  her  lap.  When  Elsmere  was  introduced  to  her,  she  got 
up,  and  said  with  some  effusiveness,  and  a  distinct  Westmore- 
land accent — 

'  Very  pleased  indeed  to  make  your  acquaintance,  sir,'  while 
she  enclosed  his  fingers  in  a  capacious  hand. 

Mrs.  Leyburn,  looking  fidgety  and  uncomfortable,  was  sit- 
ting near  her,  and  Catherine,  the  only  member  of  the  party 
who  showed  no  sign  of  embarrassment  when  Robert  entered, 
was  superintending  her  aunt's  tea  and  talking  busily  the 
while. 

Robert  sat  down  at  a  little  distance  beside  Agnes  and  Rose, 
who  were  chattering  together  a  little  artificially  and  of  set 
purpose  as  it  seemed  to  him.  But  the  aunt  was  not  to  be 
ignored.  She  talked  too  loud  not  to  be  overheard,  and  Agnes 
inwardly  noted  that  as  soon  as  Robert  Elsmere  appeared  she 
talked  louder  than  before.  He  gathered  presently  that  she  was 
an  ardent  Wesleyan,  and  that  she  was  engaged  in  describing  to 
Catherine  and  Mrs.  Leyburn  the  evangelistic  exploits  of  her 
eldest  son,  who  had  recently  obtained  his  first  circuit  as  a 
Wesleyan  minister.  He  was  shrewd  enough,  too,  to  guess,  after 
a  minute  or  two,  that  his  presence  and  probably  his  obnoxious 
clerical  dress  gave  additional  zest  to  the  recital. 

'  Oh,  his  success  at  Colesbridge  has  been  somethin'  marvel- 
lous,' he  heard  her  say,  with  uplifted  hands  and  eyes,  '  some-thin' 


CHAP,  vi  WESTMORELAND  85 

marvellous.  The  Lord  has  blessed  him  indeed !  It  doesn't 
matter  what  it  is,  whether  it's  meetin's,  or  sermons,  or  parlour 
work,  or  just  faithful  dealin's  with  souls  one  by  one.  Satan 
has  no  cliverer  foe  than  Edward.  He  never  shuts  his  eyes  ;  as 
Edward  says  himself,  it's  like  trackin'  for  game  is  huntin'  for 
souls.  Why,  the  other  day  he  was  walkin'  out  from  Coventry 
to  a  service.  It  was  the  Sabbath,  and  he  saw  a  man  in  a  bit  of 
grass  by  the  roadside,  mendin'  his  cart.  And  he  stopped  did 
Edward,  and  gave  him  the  Word  strong.  The  man  seemed 
puzzled  like,  and  said  he  meant  no  harm.  "  No  harm  ! "  says 
Edward,  "when  you're  just  doin'  the  devil's  work  every  nail 
you  put  in,  and  hammerin'  away,  mon,  at  your  own  damnation." 
But  here's  his  letter.'  And  while  Rose  turned  away  to  a  far 
window  to  hide  an  almost  hysterical  inclination  to  laugh,  Mrs. 
Fleming  opened  her  bag,  took  out  a  treasured  paper,  and  read 
with  the  emphasis  and  the  unction  peculiar  to  a  certain  type  of 
revivalism — 

'  "  Poor  sinner  !  He  was  much  put  about.  I  left  him,  pray- 
ing the  Lord  my  shaft  might  rankle  in  him  ;  ay,  might  fester 
and  burn  in  him  till  he  found  no  peace  but  in  Jesus.  He  seemed 
very  dark  and  destitute — no  respect  for  the  Word  or  its  minis- 
ters. A  bit  farther  I  met  a  boy  carrying  a  load  of  turnips.  To 
him,  too,  I  was  faithful,  and  he  went  on,  taking,  without  know- 
ing it,  a  precious  leaflet  with  him  in  his  bag.  Glorious  work  ! 
If  Wesleyans  will  but  go  on  claiming  even  the  highways  for 
God,  sin  will  skulk  yet.  ' 

A  dead  silence.  Mrs.  Fleming  folded  up  the  letter  and  put 
it  back  into  her  bag. 

'There's  your  true  minister,'  she  said,  with  a  large  judicial 
utterance  as  she  closed  the  snap.  '  Wherever  he  goes  Edward 
must  have  souls  ! ' 

And  she  threw  a  swift  searching  look  at  the  young  clergyman 
in  the  window. 

'  He  must  have  very  hard  work  with  so  much  walking  and 
preaching,'  said  Catherine  gently. 

Somehow,  as  soon  as  she  spoke,  Elsmere  saw  the  whole  odd 
little  scene  with  other  eyes. 

'  His  work  is  just  wearin'  him  out,'  said  the  mother  fervently ; 
'  but  a  minister  doesn't  think  of  that.  Wherever  he  goes  there 
are  sinners  saved.  He  stayed  last  week  at  a  house  near  Nun- 
eaton.  At  family  prayer  alone  there  were  five  saved.  And  at 
the  prayer-meetin  s  on  the  Sabbath  such  outpourin's  of  the 
Spirit !  Edward  comes  home,  his  wife  tells  me,  just  ready  to 
drop.  Are  you  acquainted,  sir,'  she  added,  turning  suddenly  to 
Elsmere,  and  speaking  in  a  certain  tone  of  provocation,  '  with 
the  labours  of  our  Wesleyan  ministers  ? ' 

'No,'  said  Robert,  with  his  pleasant  smile,  'not  personally. 
But  I  have  the  greatest  respect  for  them  as  a  body  of  devoted 
men.' 

The  look  of  battle  faded  from  the  woman's  face.     It  was  not 


86  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

an  unpleasant  face.  He  even  saw  strange  reminiscences  of 
Catherine  in  it  at  times. 

'  You're  aboot  right  there,  sir.  Not  that  they  dare  take  any 
credit  to  themselves — it's  grace,  sir,  all  grace.' 

'Aunt  Ellen,'  said  Catherine,  while  a  sudden  light  broke 
over  her  face ;  '  I  just  want  you  to  take  Edward  a  little  story 
from  me.  Ministers  are  good  things,  but  God  can  do  without 
them.' 

And  she  laid  her  hand  on  her  aunt's  knee  with  a  smile  in 
which  there  was  the  slightest  touch  of  affectionate  satire. 

'  I  was  up  among  the  fells  the  other  day,'  she  went  on ;  '  I 
met  an  elderly  man  cutting  wood  in  a  plantation,  and  I  stopped 
and  asked  him  how  he  was.  "  Ah,  miss,"  he  said,  "  verra  weel, 
verra  weel.  And  yet  it  was  nobbut  Friday  morning  lasst;  I 
cam  opp  here,  awfu'  bad  in  my  sperrits  like.  For  my  wife 
she's  sick,  an'  a'  dwinnelt  away,  and  I'm  gettin'  auld,  and  can't 
wark  as  I'd  used  to,  and  it  did  luke  to  me  as  thoo  there  was 
naethin'  afore  us  nobbut  t'  Union.  And  t'  mist  war  low  on  t' 
fells,  and  I  sat  oonder  t'  wall,  wettish  and  broodin'  like.  And 
theer — all  ov  a  soodent  the  Lord  found  me  !  Yes,  puir  Reuben 
Judge,  as  dawn't  matter  to  naebody,  the  Lord  found  un.  It 
war  leyke  as  thoo  His  feeace  cam  a-glisterin'  an'  a-shinin' 
through  t'  mist.  An'  iver  sence  then,  miss,  aa've  jest  felt  as 
thoo  aa  could  a'  cut  an'  stackt  all  t'  wood  on  t'  fell  in  naw  time 
at  a' !  "  And  he  waved  his  hand  round  the  mounta  in  side  which 
was  covered  with  plantation.  And  all  the  way  along  the  path 
for  ever  so  long  I  could  hear  him  singing,  chopping  away,  and 
quavering  out,  "  Rock  of  Ages." ' 

She  paused,  her  delicate  face,  with  just  a  little  quiver  in  the 
lip,  turned  to  her  aunt,  her  eyes  glowing  as  though  a  hidden 
fire  had  leapt  suddenly  outward.  And  yet  the  gesture,  the 
attitude,  was  simplicity  and  unconsciousness  itself.  Robert  had 
never  heard  her  say  anything  so  intimate  before.  Nor  had  he 
ever  seen  her  so  inspired,  so  beautiful.  She  had  transmuted 
the  conversation  at  a  touch.  It  had  been  barbarous  prose ;  she 
had  turned  it  into  purest  poetry.  Only  the  noblest  souls  have 
such  an  alchemy  as  this  at  command,  thought  the  watcher  on 
the  other  side  of  the  room  with  a  passionate  reverence. 

'  I  wasn't  thinkin'  of  narrowin'  the  Lord  down  to  ministers,' 
said  Mrs.  Fleming,  with  a  certain  loftiness.  '  We  all  know  He 
can  do  without  us  puir  worms.' 

Then,  seeing  that  no  one  replied,  the  good  woman  got  up  to 
go.  Much  of  her  apparel  had  slipped  away  from  her  in  the 
fervours  of  revivalist  anecdote,  and  while  she  hunted  for  gloves 
and  reticule — officiously  helped  by  the  younger  girls — Robert 
crossed  over  to  Catherine. 

'  You  lifted  us  on  to  your  own  high  places  ! '  he  said,  bending 
down  to  her ;  '  I  shall  carry  your  story  with  me  through  the 
fells.' 

She  looked  up,  and  as  she  met  his  warm  moved  look  a  little 


OHAP.  vii  WESTMORELAND  87 

glow  and  tremor  crept  into  the  face,  destroying  its  exalted 
expression.  He  broke  the  spell ;  she  sank  from  the  poet  into 
the  embarrassed  woman. 

'  You  must  see  my  old  man,'  she  said,  with  an  effort ;  '  he  is 
worth  a  library  of  sermons.  I  must  introduce  him  to  you.' 

He  could  think  of  nothing  else  to  say  just  then,  but  could 
only  stand  impatiently  wishing  for  Mrs.  1  leming's  disappear- 
ance, that  he  might  somehow  appropriate  her  eldest  niece. 
But  alas !  when  she  went,  Catherine  went  out  with  her,  and 
reappeared  no  more,  though  he  waited  some  time. 

He  walked  home  in  a  whirl  of  feeling ;  on  the  way  he  stopped, 
and  leaning  over  a  gate  which  led  into  one  of  the  river-fields 
gave  himself  up  to  the  mounting  tumult  within.  Gradually, 
from  the  half -articulate  chaos  of  hope  and  memory,  there 
emerged  the  deliberate  voice  of  his  inmost  manhood. 

'  In  her  and  her  only  is  my  heart's  desire  !  She  and  she  only 
if  she  will,  and  God  will,  shall  be  my  wife  ! ' 

He  lifted  his  head  and  looked  out  on  the  dewy  field,  the  even- 
ing beauty  of  the  hills,  with  a  sense  of  immeasurable  change — 

'Tears 

Were  in  his  eyes,  and  in  his  ears 
The  murmur  of  a  thousand  years.' 

He  felt  himself  knit  to  his  kind,  to  his  race,  as  he  had  never 
felt  before.  It  was  as  though,  after  a  long  apprenticeship,  he 
had  sprung  suddenly  into  maturity — entered  at  last  into  the 
full  human  heritage.  But  the  very  intensity  and  solemnity 
of  his  own  feeling  gave  him  a  rare  clear-sightedness.  He  realised 
that  he  had  no  certainty  of  success,  scarcely  even  an  entirely 
reasonable  hope.  But  what  of  that  ?  Were  they  not  together, 
alone,  practically,  in  these  blessed  solitudes  ?  Would  they  not 
meet  to-morrow,  and  next  day,  and  the  day  after  ?  Were  not 
time  and  opportunity  all  his  own  ?  How  kind  her  looks  are 
even  now !  Courage !  And  through  that  maidenly  kindness 
his  own  passion  shall  send  the  last,  transmuting  glow. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  following  morning  about  noon,  Rose,  who  had  been  coaxed 
and  persuaded  by  Catherine,  much  against  her  will,  into  taking 
a  singing  class  at  the  school,  closed  the  school  door  behind  her 
with  a  sigh  of  relief,  and  tripped  up  the  road  to  Burwood. 

'  How  abominably  they  sang  this  morning  ! '  she  said  to  her- 
self with  curving  lip.  '  Talk  of  the  natural  north-country  gift 
for  music  !  What  ridiculous  fictions  people  set  up  !  Dear  me, 
what  clouds !  Perhaps  we  shan't  get  our  walk  to  Shanmoor 
after  all,  and  if  we  don't,  and  if — if — '  her  cheek  flushed  with  a 


88  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

sudden  excitement — 'if  Mr.  Elsmere  doesn't  propose,  Mrs. 
Thornburgh  will  be  unmanageable.  It  is  all  Agnes  and  I  can 
do  to  keep  her  in  bounds  as  it  is,  and  if  something  doesn't  come 
off  to-day,  she'll  be  for  reversing  the  usual  proceeding,  and 
asking  Catherine  her  intentions,  which  would  ruin  everything.' 

Then  raising  her  head  she  swept  her  eyes  round  the  sky. 
The  wind  was  freshening,  the  clouds  were  coming  up  fast  from 
the  westward  ;  over  the  summit  of  High  Fell  and  the  crags  on 
either  side,  a  gray  straight-edged  curtain  was  already  lowering. 

'  It  will  hold  up  yet  awhile,'  she  thought, '  and  if  it  rains  later 
we  can  get  a  carriage  at  Shanmoor  and  come  back  by  the  road.' 

And  she  walked  on  homewards  meditating,  her  thin  fingers 
clasped  before  her,  the  wind  blowing  her  skirts,  the  blue  rib- 
bons on  her  hat,  the  little  gold  curls  on  her  temples,  in  a  pretty 
many-coloured  turmoil  about  her.  When  she  got  to  Burwood 
she  shut  herself  into  the  room  which  was  peculiarly  hers,  the 
room  which  had  been  a  stable.  Now  it  was  full  of  artistic  odds 
and  ends — her  fiddle,  of  course,  and  piles  of  music,  her  violin 
stand,  a  few  deal  tables  and  cane  chairs  beautified  by  a  number 
of  chiffons,  bits  of  Liberty  stuffs  with  the  edges  still  ragged,  or 
cheap  morsels  of  Syrian  embroidery.  On  the  tables  stood 
photographs  of  musicians  and  friends — the  spoils  of  her  visits 
to  Manchester,  and  of  two  visits  to  London  which  gleamed  like 
golden  points  in  the  girl's  memory.  The  plastered  walls  were 
covered  with  an  odd  medley.  Here  was  a  round  mirror,  of 
which  Rose  was  enormously  proud.  She  had  extracted  it  from 
a  farmhouse  of  the  neighbourhood,  and  paid  for  it  with  her 
own  money.  There  a  group  of  unfinished  headlong  sketches  of 
the  most  fiercely  impressionist  description — the  work  and  the 
gift  of  a  knot  of  Manchester  artists,  who  had  feted  and  flattered 
the  beautiful  little  Westmoreland  girl,  when  she  was  staying 
among  them,  to  her  heart's  content.  Manchester,  almost  alone 
among  our  great  towns  of  the  present  day,  has  not  only  a  musi- 
cal, but  a  pictorial  life  of  its  own ;  its  young  artists  dub  them- 
selves 'a  school,'  study  in  Paris,  and  when  they  come  home 
scout  the  Academy  and  its  methods,  and  pine  to  set  up  a  rival 
art-centre,  skilled  in  all  the  methods  of  the  Salon,  in  the  murky 
north.  Rose's  uncle,  originally  a  clerk  in  a  warehouse,  and  a 
rough  diamond  enough,  had  more  or  less  moved  with  the  times, 
like  his  brother  Richard ;  at  any  rate  he  had  grown  rich,  had 
married  a  decent  wife,  and  was  glad  enough  to  befriend  his 
dead  brother's  children,  who  wanted  nothing  of  him,  and  did 
their  uncle  a  credit  of  which  he  was  sensible,  by  their  good 
manners  and  good  looks.  Music  was  the  only  point  at  which 
he  touched  the  culture  of  the  times,  like  so  many  business  men ; 
but  it  pleased  him  also  to  pose  as  a  patron  of  local  art ;  so  that 
when  Rose  went  to  stay  with  her  childless  uncle  and  aunt,  she 
found  long-haired  artists  and  fiery  musicians  about  the  place, 
who  excited  and  encouraged  her  musical  gift,  who  sketched  her 
while  she  played,  and  talked  to  the  pretty,  clever,  unformed 


CHAP,  vii  WESTMORELAND  89 

creature  of  London  and  Paris  and  Italy,  and  set  her  pining  for 
that  golden  vie  de  Boheme  which  she  alone  apparently  of  all 
artists  was  destined  never  to  know. 

For  she  was  an  artist — she  would  be  an  artist — let  Catherine 
say  what  she  would  !  She  came  back  from  Manchester  restless 
for  she  knew  not  what,  thirsty  for  the  joys  and  emotions  of  art, 
determined  to  be  free,  reckless,  passionate ;  with  Wagner  and 
Brahms  in  her  young  blood ;  and  found  Burwood  waiting  for 
her — Burwood,  the  lonely  house  in  the  lonely  valley,  of  which 
Catherine  was  the  presiding  genius.  Catherine  I  For  Rose, 
what  a  multitude  of  associations  clustered  round  the  name ! 
To  her  it  meant  everything  at  this  moment  against  which  her 
soul  rebelled — the  most  scrupulous  order,  the  most  rigid  self- 
repression,  the  most  determined  sacrificing  of  '  this  warm  kind 
world,'  with  all  its  indefensible  delights,  to  a  cold  other-world 
with  its  torturing  inadmissible  claims.  Even  in  the  midst  of 
her  stolen  joys  at  Manchester  or  London,  this  mere  name,  the 
mere  mental  image  of  Catherine  moving  through  life,  wrapped 
in  a  religious  peace  and  certainty  as  austere  as  they  were 
beautiful,  and  asking  of  all  about  her  the  same  absolute  sur- 
render to  an  awful  Master  she  gave  so  easily  herself,  was  enough 
to  chill  the  wayward  Rose,  and  fill  her  with  a  kind  of  restless 
despair.  And  at  home,  as  the  vicar  said,  the  two  sisters  were 
always  on  the  verge  of  conflict.  Rose  had  enough  of  her  father 
iu  her  to  suffer  in  resisting,  but  resist  she  must  by  the  law  of 
her  nature. 

Now,  as  she  threw  off  her  walking  things,  she  fell  first  upon 
her  violin,  and  rushed  through  a  Brahms's  '  Liebeslied,'  her 
eyes  dancing,  her  whole  light  form  thrilling  with  the  joy  of  it  • 
and  then  with  a  sudden  revulsion  she  stopped  playing,  and 
threw  herself  down  listlessly  by  the  open  window.  Close  by 
against  the  wall  was  a  little  looking-glass,  by  which  she  often 
arranged  her  ruffled  locks ;  she  glanced  at  it  now,  it  showed  her 
a  brilliant  face  enough,  but  drooping  lips,  and  eyes  darkened 
with  the  extravagant  melancholy  of  eighteen. 

'It  is  come  to  a  pretty  pass,'  she  said  to  herself,  'that  I 
should  be  able  to  think  of  nothing  but  schemes  for  getting 
Catherine  married  and  out  of  my  way  !  Considering  what  she 
is  and  what  I  am,  and  how  she  has  slaved  for  us  all  her  life,  I 
seem  to  have  descended  pretty  low.  Heigh  ho  ! ' 

And  with  a  portentous  sigh  she  dropped  her  chin  on  her 
hand.  She  was  half  acting,,  acting  to  herself.  Life  was  not 
really  quite  unbearable,  and  she  knew  it.  But  it  relieved  her 
to  overdo  it. 

'  I  wonder  how  much  chance  there  is,'  she  mused  presently. 
'  Mr.  Elsmere  will  soon  be  ridiculous.  Why,  /  saw  him  gather 
up  those  violets  she  threw  away  yesterday  on  Moor  Crag.  And 
as  for  her,  I  don't  believe  she  has  realised  the  situation  a  bit. 
At  least,  if  she  has,  she  is  as  unlike  other  mortals  in  this  as  iu 
everything  else.  But  when  she  does ' 


90  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

She  frowned  and  meditated,  but  got  no  light  on  the  problem. 
Chattie  jumped  up  on  the  window-sill,  with  her  usual  stealthy 
aplomb,  and  rubbed  herself  against  the  girl's  face. 

'  Oh,  Chattie  ! '  cried  Rose,  throwing  her  arms  round  the  cat, 
'if  Catherine  '11  only  marry  Mr.  Elsmere,  my  dear,  and  be 
happy  ever  afterwards,  and  set  me  free  to  live  my  own  life 
a  bit,  I'll  be  so  good,  you  won't  know  me,  Chattie.  And  you 
shall  have  a  new  collar,  my  beauty,  and  cream  till  you  die 
of  it ! ' 

And  springing  up  she  dragged  in  the  cat,  and  snatching  a 
scarlet  anemone  from  a  bunch  on  the  table,  stood  opposite 
Chattie,  who  stood  slowly  waving  her  magnificent  tail  from 
side  to  side,  and  glaring  as  though  it  were  not  at  all  to  her 
taste  to  be  hustled  and  bustled  in  this  way. 

'  Now,  Chattie,  listen  !    Will  she  ? ' 

A  leaf  of  the  flower  dropped  on  Chattie's  nose. 

'Won't  she?  Will  she?  Won't  she?  Will Tiresome  flower, 

why  did  Nature  give  it  such  a  beggarly  few  petals  ?  If  I'd  had 
a  daisy  it  would  have  all  come  right.  Come,  Chattie,  waltz ; 
and  let's  forget  this  wicked  world  ! ' 

And,  snatching  up  her  violin,  the  girl  broke  into  a  Strauss 
waltz,  dancing  to  it  the  while,  her  cotton  skirts  flying,  her 
pretty  feet  twinkling,  till  her  eyes  glowed,  and  her  cheeks 
blazed  with  a  double  intoxication — the  intoxication  of  move- 
ment, and  the  intoxication  of  sound — the  cat  meanwhile  follow- 
ing her  with  little  mincing  perplexed  steps,  as  though  not 
knowing  what  to  make  of  her. 

'  Rose,  you  madcap  ! '  cried  Agnes,  opening  the  door. 

'Not  at  all,  my  dear,'  said  Rose  calmly,  stopping  to  take 
breath.  '  Excellent  practice  and  uncommonly  difficult.  Try  if 
you  can  do  it,  and  see  ! ' 

The  weather  held  up  in  a  gray  grudging  sort  of  way,  and 
Mrs.  Thornburgh  especially  was  all  for  braying  the  clouds  and 
going  on  with  the  expedition.  It  was  galling  to  her  that  she 
herself  would  have  to  be  driven  to  Shanmoor  behind  the  fat 
vicarage  pony,  while  the  others  would  be  climbing  the  fells,  and 
all  sorts  of  exciting  things  might  be  happening.  Still  it  was 
infinitely  better  to  be  half  in  it  than  not  in  it  at  all,  and  she  started 
by  the  side  of  the  vicarage  'man'  in  a  most  delicious  flutter. 
The  skies  might  fall  any  day  now.  Elsmere  had  not  confided  in 
her,  though  she  was  unable  to  count  the  openings  she  had  given 
him  thereto.  For  one  of  the  frankest  of  men  he  had  kept  his 
secret,  so  far  as  words  went,  with  a  remarkable  tenacity. 
Probably  the  neighbourhood  of  Mrs.  Thornburgh  was  enough 
to  make  the  veriest  chatterbox  secretive.  But  notwithstanding, 
no  one  possessing  the  clue  could  live  in  the  same  house  with 
him  these  June  days  without  seeing  that  the  whole  man  was 
absorbed,  transformed,  and  that  the  crisis  might  be  reached  at 
any  moment.  Even  the  vicar  was  eager  and  watchful,  and 
playing  up  to  his  wife  in  fine  style,  and  if  the  situation  had  so 


CHAP,  vii  WESTMORELAND  91 

worked  on  the  vicar,  Mrs.  Thornburgh's  state  is  easier  imagined 
than  described. 

The  walk  to  Shanmoor  need  not  be  chronicled.  The  party 
kept  together.  Robert  fancied  sometimes  that  there  was  a 
certain  note  of  purpose  in  the  way  in  which  Catherine  clung  to 
the  vicar.  If  so  it  did  not  disquiet  him.  Never  had  she  been 
kinder,  more  gentle.  Nay,  as  the  walk  went  on  a  lovely  gaiety 
broke  through  her  tranquil  manner,  as  though  she,  like  the 
others,  had  caught  exhilaration  from  the  sharpened  breeze  and 
the  towering  mountains,  restored  to  all  their  grandeur  by  the 
storm  clouds. 

And  yet  she  had  started  in  some  little  inward  trouble.  She 
had  promised  to  join  this  walk  to  Shanmoor,  she  had  promised 
to  go  with  the  others  on  a  picnic  the  following  day,  but  her 
conscience  was  pricking  her.  Twice  this  last  fortnight  had  she 
been  forced  to  give  up  a  night-school  she  held  in  a  little  lonely 
hamlet  among  the  fells,  because  even  she  had  been  too  tired  to 
walk  there  and  back  after  a  day  of  physical  exertion.  Were 
not  the  world  and  the  flesh  encroaching?  She  had  been 
conscious  of  a  strange  inner  restlessness  as  they  all  stood 
waiting  in  the  road  for  the  vicar  and  Elsmere.  Agnes  had 
thought  her  looking  depressed  and  pale,  and  even  dreamt  for  a 
moment  of  suggesting  to  her  to  stay  at  home.  And  then  ten 
minutes  after  they  had  started  it  had  all  gone,  her  depression, 
blown  away  by  the  winds, — or  charmed  away  by  a  happy  voice, 
a  manly  presence,  a  keen  responsive  eye  ? 

Elsmere,  indeed,  was  gaiety  itself.  He  kept  up  an  incessant 
war  with  Rose ;  he  had  a  number  of  little  jokes  going  at  the 
vicar's  expense,  which  kept  that  good  man  in  a  half-protesting 
chuckle  most  of  the  way  ;  he  cleared  every  gate  that  presented 
itself  in  first-rate  Oxford  form,  and  climbed  every  point  of  rock 
with  a  cat-like  agility  that  Jset  the  girls  scoffing  at  the  pre- 
tence of  invalidism  under  which  he  had  foisted  himself  on 
Whin  dale. 

'  How  fine  all  this  black  purple  is  ! '  he  cried,  as  they  topped 
the  ridge,  and  the  Shanmoor  valley  lay  before  them,  bounded 
on  the  other  side  by  line  after  line  of  mountain,  Wetherlam 
and  the  Pikes  and  Fairfield  in  the  far  distance,  piled  sombrely 
under  a  sombre  sky.  '  I  had  grown  quite  tired  of  the  sun.  He 
had  done  his  best  to  make  you  commonplace.' 

'  Tired  of  the  sun  in  Westmoreland  ?  said  Catherine,  with  a 
little  mocking  wonder.  '  How  wanton,  how  prodigal ! ' 

'  Does  it  deserve  a  Nemesis  1 '  he  said,  laughing.  '  Drowning 
from  now  till  I  depart?  No  matter.  I  can  bear  a  second 
deluge  with  an  even  mind.  On  this  enchanted  soil  all  things 
are  welcome ! ' 

She  looked  up,  smiling,  at  his  vehemence,  taking  it  all  as  a 
tribute  to  the  country,  or  to  his  own  recovered  health.  He 
stood  leaning  on  his  stick,  gazing,  however,  not  at  the  view  but 
at  her.  The  others  stood  a  little  way  off  laughing  and  chatter- 


92  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

ing.  As  their  eyes  met,  a  strange  new  pulse  leapt  up  in 
Catherine. 

'  The  wind  is  very  boisterous  here,'  she  said,  with  a  shiver. 
'  I  think  we  ought  to  be  going  on.' 

And  she  hurried  up  to  the  others,  nor  did  she  leave  their 
shelter  till  they  were  in  sight  of  the  little  Shanmoor  inn,  where 
they  were  to  have  tea.  The  pony  carriage  was  already  standing 
in  front  of  the  inn,  and  Mrs.  Thornburgh's  gray  curls  shaking 
at  the  window. 

'  William  !' she  shouted,  'bring  them  in.  Tea  is  just  ready, 
and  Mr.  Ruskin  was  here  last  week,  and  there  are  ever  so  many 
new  names  in  the  visitors'  book  ! ' 

While  the  girls  went  in  Elsmere  stood  looking  a  moment  at 
the  inn,  the  bridge,  and  the  village.  It  was  a  characteristic 
Westmoreland  scene.  The  low  whitewashed  inn,  with  its 
newly  painted  signboard,  was  to  his  right,  the  pony  at  the  door 
lazily  flicking  off  the  flies  and  dropping  its  greedy  nose  in  search 
of  the  grains  of  corn  among  the  cobbles  ;  to  his  left  a  gray  stone 
bridge  over  a  broad  light-filled  river ;  beyond,  a  little  huddled 
village  backed  by  and  apparently  built  out  of  the  great  slate 
quarry  which  represented  the  only  industry  of  the  neighbour- 
hood, and  a  tiny  towered  church — the  scene  on  the  Sabbath  of 
Mr.  Mayhew's  ministrations.  Beyond  the  village,  shoulders  of 
purple  fell,  and  behind  the  inn  masses  of  broken  crag  rising  at 
the  very  head  of  the  valley  into  a  fine  pike,  along  whose  jagged 
edges  the  rain -clouds  were  trailing.  There  was  a  little  lurid 
storm-light  on  the  river,  but,  in  general,  the  colour  was  all  dark 
and  rich,  the  white  inn  gleaming  on  a  green  and  purple  back- 
ground. He  took  it  all  into  his  heart,  covetously,  greedily, 
trying  to  fix  it  there  for  ever. 

Presently  he  was  called  in  by  the  vicar,  and  found  a  tempting 
tea  spread  in  a  light  upper  room,  where  Agnes  and  Rose  were 
already  making  fun  of  the  chromo-lithographs  and  rummaging 
the  visitors'  book.  The  scrambling,  chattering  meal  passed  like 
a  flash.  At  the  beginning  of  it  Mrs.  Thornburgli's  small  gray 
eyes  had  travelled  restlessly  from  face  to  face,  as  though  to  say, 
'What — no  news  yet?  Nothing  happened?'  As  for  Elsmere, 
though  it  seemed  to  him  at  the  time  one  of  the  brightest 
moments  of  existence,  he  remembered  little  afterwards  but  the 
scene :  the  peculiar  clean  mustiness  of  the  room  only  just 
opened  for  the  summer  season,  a  print  of  the  Princess  of  Wales 
on  the  wall  opposite  him,  a  stuffed  fox  over  the  mantelpiece, 
Rose's  golden,  head  and  heavy  amber'necklace,  and  the  figure  at 
the  vicar's  right,  in  a  gown  of  a  little  dark  blue  check,  the  broad 
hat  shading  the  white  brow  and  luminous  eyes. 

When  tea  was  over  they  lounged  out  on  the  bridge.  There 
was  to  be  no  long  lingering,  however.  The  clouds  were  deepen- 
ing, the  rain  could  not  be  far  off.  But  if  they  started  soon  they 
could  probably  reach  home  before  it  came  down.  Elsmere  and 
Rose  hung  over  the  gray  stone  parapet,  mottled  with  the  green 


CHAP,  vii  WESTMORELAND  93 

and  gold  of  innumerable  mosses,  and  looked  down  through  a 
fringe  of  English  maidenhair  growing  along  the  coping,  into  the 
clear  eddies  of  the  stream.  Suddenly  he  raised  himself  on  one 
elbow,  and,  shading  his  eyes,  looked  to  where  the  vicar  and 
Catherine  were  standing  in  front  of  the  inn,  touched  for  an 
instant  by  a  beam  of  fitful  light  slipping  between  two  great 
rain-clouds. 

'  How  well  that  hat  and  dress  become  your  sister  ! '  he  said, 
the  words  breaking,  as  it  were,  from  his  lips. 

'  Do  you  think  Catherine  pretty  ? '  said  Rose  with  an  excellent 
pretence  of  innocence,  detaching  a  little  pebble  and  flinging  it 
harmlessly  at  a  water- wagtail  balancing  on  a  stone  below. 

He  flushed.  *  Pretty  !  You  might  as  well  apply  the  word  to 
your  mountains,  to  the  exquisite  river,  to  that  great  purple 
peak  !' 

'  Yes,'  thought  Rose,  '  she  is  not  unlike  that  high  cold  peak  ! ' 
But  her  girlish  sympathy  conquered  her ;  it  was  very  exciting, 
and  she  liked  Elsmere.  She  turned  back  to  him,  her  face 
overspread  with  a  quite  irrepressible  smile.  He  reddened  still 
more,  then  they  stared  into  each  other's  eyes,  and  without  a 
word  more  understood  each  other  perfectly. 

Rose  held  out  her  hand  to  him  with  a  little  brusque  bon 
camarade  gesture.  He  pressed  it  warmly  in  his. 

'  That  was  nice  of  you ! '  he  cried.  '  Very  nice  of  you  ! 
Friends  then  ? ' 

She  nodded,  and  drew  her  hand  away  just  as  Agnes  and  the 
vicar  disturbed  them. 

Meanwhile  Catherine  was  standing  by  the  side  of  the  pony 
carriage,  watching  Mrs.  Thornburgh's  preparations. 

'  You're  sure  you  don't  mind  driving  home  alone  ? '  she  said 
in  a  troubled  voice.  '  Mayn't  I  go  with  you  ? ' 

'  My  dear,  certainly  not !  As  if  I  wasn't  accustomed  to  going 
about  alone  at  my  time  of  life  !  No,  no,  my  dear,  you  go  and 
have  your  walk ;  you'll  get  home  before  the  rain.  Ready,  James.' 

The  old  vicarage  factotum  could  not  imagine  what  made  his 
charge  so  anxious  to  be  oft".  She  actually  took  the  whip  out  of 
his  hand  and  gave  a  flick  to  the  pony,  who  swerved  and  started 
off  in  a  way  which  would  have  made  his  mistress  clamorously 
nervous  under  any  other  circumstances.  Catherine  stood  look- 
ing after  her. 

'  Now,  then,  right  about  face  and  quick  march  ! '  exclaimed 
the  vicar.  '  We've  got  to  race  that  cloud  over  the  Pike.  It'll  be 
up  with  us  in  no  time.' 

Off  they  started,  and  were  soon  climbing  the  slippery  green 
slopes,  or  crushing  through  the  fern  of  the  fell  they  had  de- 
scended earlier  in  the  afternoon.  Catherine  for  some  little  way 
walked  last  of  the  party,  the  vicar  in  front  of  her.  Then 
Elsmere  picked  a  stonecrc-p,  quarrelled  over  its  precise  name 
with  Rose,  and  waited  for  Catherine,  who  had  a  very  close  and 
familiar  knowledge  of  the  botany  of  the  district. 


94  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

'  You  have  crushed  me,'  he  said,  laughing,  as  he  put  the  flower 
carefully  into  his  pocket-book ;  '  but  it  is  worth  while  to  be 
crushed  by  any  one  who  can  give  so  much  ground  for  their 
knowledge.  How  you  do  know  your  mountains — from  their 
peasants  to  their  plants  ! ' 

'I  have  had  more  than  ten  able-bodied  years  living  and 
scrambling  among  them,'  she  said,  smiling. 

'  Do  you  keep  up  all  your  visits  and  teaching  in  the  winter  ? ' 

'  Oh,  not  so  much,  of  course  !  But  people  must  be  helped  and 
taught  in  the  winter.  And  our  winter  is  often  not  as  hard  as 
yours  down  south.' 

'  Do  you  go  on  with  that  night-school  in  Poll  Ghyll,  for  in- 
stance 1 '  he  said,  with  another  note  in  his  voice!* 

Catherine  looked  at  him  and  coloured.  'Rose  has  been  tell- 
ing tales,'  she  said.  '  I  wish  she  would  leave  my  proceedings 
alone.  Poll  Ghyll  is  the  family  bone  of  contention  at  present. 
Yes,  I  go  on  with  it.  I  always  take  a  lantern  when  the  night  is 
dark,  and  I  know  every  inch  of  the  ground,  and  Bob  is  always 
with  me  ;  aren't  you,  Bob  1 ' 

And  she  stooped  down  to  pat  the  collie  beside  her.  Bob 
looked  up  at  her,  blinking  with  a  proudly  confidential  air  as 
though  to  remind  her  that  there  were  a  good  many  such  secrets 
between  them. 

'  I  like  to  fancy  you  with  your  lantern  in  the  dark,'  he  cried, 
the  hidden  emotion  piercing  through,  'the  night  wind  blowing 
about  you,  the  black  mountains  to  right  and  left  of  you, 
some  little  stream,  perhaps,  running  beside  you  for  com- 
pany, your  dog  guarding  you,  and  all  good  angels  going  with 
you.' 

She  flushed  still  more  deeply  ;  the  impetuous  words  affected 
her  strangely. 

'  Don't  fancy  it  at  all,'  she  said,  laughing.  '  It  is  a  very  small 
and  very  natural  incident  of  one's  life  here.  Look  back,  Mr. 
Elsmere  ;  the  rain  has  beaten  us  ! ' 

He  looked  back  and  saw  the  great  Pike  over  Shanmoor  village 
blotted  out  in  a  moving  deluge  of  rain.  The  quarry  opposite  on 
the  mountain  side  gleamed  green  and  vivid  against  the  ink -black 
fell ;  some  clothes  hanging  out  in  the  field  below  the  church 
flapped  wildly  hither  and  thither  in  the  sudden  gale,  the  only 
spot  of  white  in  the  prevailing  blackness  ;  children  with  their 
petticoats  over  their  heads  ran  homewards  along  the  road  the 
walking  party  had  just  quitted  ;  the  stream  beneath,  spreading 
broadly  through  the  fields,  shivered  and  wrinkled  under  the 
blast.  Up  it  came,  and  the  rain  mists  with  it.  In  another 
minute  the  storm  was  beating  in  their  faces. 

'  Caught ! '  cried  Elsmere,  in  a  voice  almost  of  jubilation. 
'  Let  me  help  you  into  your  cloak,  Miss  Leyburn.' 

He  flung  it  round  her,  and  struggled  into  his  own  mackintosh. 
The  vicar  in  front  of  them  turned  and  waved  his  hand  to  them 
in  laughing  despair,  then  hurried  after  the  others,  evidently 


CHAP,  vii  WESTMORELAND  95 

with  the  view  of  performing  for  them  the  same  office  Elsmere 
had  just  performed  for  Catherine. 

Robert  and  his  companion  struggled  on  for  a  while  in  a 
breathless  silence  against  the  deluge,  which  seemed  to  beat  on 
them  from  all  sides.  He  walked  behind  her,  sheltering  her  by 
his  tall  form  and  his  big  umbrella  as  much  as  he  could.  His 
pulses  were  all  aglow  with  the  joy  of  the  storm.  It  seemed  to 
him  that  he  rejoiced  with  the  thirsty  grass  over  which  the  rain 
streams  were  running,  that  his  heart  filled  with  the  shrunken 
becks  as  the  flood  leapt  along  them.  Let  the  elements  thunder 
and  rave  as  they  pleased.  Could  he  not  at  a  word  bring  the 
light  of  that  face,  those  eyes,  upon  him  ?  Was  she  not  his  for  a 
moment  in  the  rain  and  the  solitude,  as  she  had  never  been  in 
the  commonplace  sunshine  of  their  valley  life  ? 

Suddenly  he  heard  an  exclamation,  and  saw  her  run  on  in 
front  of  him.  What  was  the  matter  ?  Then  he  noticed  for  the 
first  time  that  Rose,  far  ahead,  was  still  walking  in  her  cotton 
dress.  The  little  scatterbrain  had,  of  course,  forgotten  her  cloak. 
But,  monstrous !  There  was  Catherine  stripping  off  her  own, 
Rose  refusing  it.  In  vain.  The  sister's  determined  arms  put  it 
round  her.  Rose  is  enwrapped,  buttoned  up  before  she  knows 
where  she  is,  and  Catherine  falls  back,  pursued  by  some  shaft 
from  Rose,  more  sarcastic  than  grateful,  to  judge  by  the  tone  of  it. 

'  Miss  Ley  burn,  what  have  you  been  doing  ? ' 

'  Rose  had  forgotten  her  cloak,'  she  said  briefly.  '  She  has  a 
very  thin  dress  on,  and  she  is  the  only  one  of  us  that  takes  cold 
easily.' 

'  You  must  take  my  mackintosh,'  he  said  at  once. 

She  laughed  in  his  face. 

'  As  if  I  should  do  anything  of  the  sort ! ' 

'  You  must,'  he  said,  quietly  stripping  it  off.  '  Do  you  think 
that  you  are  always  to  be  allowed  to  go  through  the  world 
taking  thought  of  other  people  and  allowing  no  one  to  take 
thought  for  you  ? ' 

He  held  it  out  to  her. 

'  No,  no  !  This  is  absurd,  Mr.  Elsmere.  You  are  not  strong 
yet.  And  I  have  often  told  you  that  nothing  hurts  me.' 

He  hung  it  deliberately  over  his  arm.  '  Very  well,  then,  there 
it  stays  ! ' 

And  they  hurried  on  again,  she  biting  her  lip  and  on  the 
point  of  laughter. 

'  Mr.  Elsmere,  be  sensible  ! '  she  said  presently,  her  look 
changing  to  one  of  real  distress.  '  I  should  never  forgive  my- 
self if  you  got  a  chill  after  your  illness  ! ' 

'  You  will  not  be  called  upon,'  he  said  in  the  most  matter-of- 
fact  tone.  '  Men's  coats  are  made  to  keep  out  weather,'  and  lie 
pointed  to  his  own,  closely  buttoned  up.  '  Your  dress — I  can't 
help  being  disrespectful  under  the  circumstances — will  be  wet 
through  in  ten  minutes.' 

Another  silence.     Then  he  overtook  her. 


96  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

'  Please,  Miss  Leyburn,'  he  said,  stopping  her. 

There  was  an  instant's  mute  contest  between  them.  The  rain 
splashed  on  the  umbrellas.  She  could  not  help  it,  she  broke 
down  into  the  merriest,  most  musical  laugh  of  a  child  that  can 
hardly  stop  itself,  and  he  joined. 

'  Mr.  Elsmere,  you  are  ridiculous  ! ' 

But  she  submitted.  He  put  the  mackintosh  round  her, 
thinking,  bold  man,  as  she  turned  her  rosy  rain-dewed  face  to 
him,  of  Wordsworth's  '  Louisa,'  and  the  poet's  cry  of  longing. 

And  yet  he  was  not  so  bold  either.  Even  at  this  moment  of 
exhilaration  he  was  conscious  of  a  bar  that  checked  and  arrested. 
Something — what  was  it  ? — drew  invisible  lines  of  defence  about 
her.  A  sort  of  divine  fear  of  her  mingled  with  his  rising  passion. 
Let  him  not  risk  too  much  too  soon. 

They  walked  on  briskly,  and  were  soon  on  the  Whindale  side 
of  the  pass.  To  the  left  of  them  the  great  hollow  of  High  Fell 
unfolded,  storm-beaten  and  dark,  the  river  issuing  from  the 
heart  of  it  like  an  angry  voice. 

'  What  a  change  ! '  he  said,  coming  up  with  her  as  the  path 
widened.  '  How  impossible  that  it  should  have  been  only 
yesterday  afternoon  I  was  lounging  up  here  in  the  heat,  by 
the  pool  where  the  stream  rises,  watching  the  white  butterflies 
on  the  turf,  and  reading  "  Laodamia  "  ! ' 

' "  Laodamia  "  ! '  she  said,  half  sighing  as  she  caught  the  name. 
'  Is  it  one  of  those  you  like  best  ? ' 

'  Yes,'  he  said,  bending  forward  that  he  might  see  her  in  spite 
of  the  umbrella.  '  How  superb  it  is — the  roll,  the  majesty  of 
it ;  the  severe  chastened  beauty  of  the  main  feeling,  the  in- 
dividual lines  ! ' 

And  he  quoted  line  after  line,  lingering  over  the  cadences. 

'It  was  my  father's  favourite  of  all,  she  said,  in  the  low 
vibrating  voice  of  memory.  '  He  said  the  last  verse  to  me  the 
day  before  he  died.' 

Kobert  recalled  it — 

'  Yet  tears  to  human  suffering  are  due, 
And  mortal  hopes  defeated  and  o'erthrown 
Are  mourned  by  man,  and  not  by  man  alone 
As  fondly  we  believe. ' 

Poor  Richard  Leyburn  !     Yet  where  had  the  defeat  lain  ? 

'  Was  he  happy  in  his  school  life  1 '  he  asked  gently.  '  Was 
teaching  what  he  liked  ? ' 

'  Oh  yes — only — '  Catherine  paused  and  then  added  hurriedly, 
as  though  drawn  on  in  spite  of  herself  by  the  grave  sympathy  of 
his  look,  '  I  never  knew  anybody  so  good  who  thought  himself 
of  so  little  account.  He  always  believed  that  he  had  missed 
everything,  wasted  everything,  and  that  anybody  else  would 
have  made  infinitely  more  out  of  his  life.  He  was  always  blam- 
ing, scourging  himself.  And  all  the  time  he  was  the  noblest, 
purest,  most  devoted ' 


CHAP,  vii  WESTMORELAND  97 

She  stopped.  Her  voice  had  passed  beyond  her  control. 
Elsmere  was  startled  by  the  feeling  she  showed.  Evidently  he 
had  touched  one  of  the  few  sore  places  in  this  pure  heart.  It 
was  as  though  her  memory  of  her  father  had  in  it  elements  of 
almost  intolerable  pathos,  as  though  the  child's  brooding  love 
and  loyalty  were  in  perpetual  protest,  even  now  after  this  lapse 
of  years,  against  the  verdict  which  an  over-scrupulous,  despond- 
ent soul  had  pronounced  upon  itself.  Did  she  feel  that  he  had 
gone  uncomforted  out  of  life — even  by  her — even  by  religion  ? — 
was  that  the  sting  1 

1  Oh,  I  can  understand  ! '  he  said  reverently — '  I  can  under- 
stand. I  have  come  across  it  once  or  twice,  that  fierce  self- 
judgment  of  the  good.  It  is  the  most  stirring  and  humbling 
thing  in  life.'  Then  his  voice  dropped.  'And  after  the  last 
conflict — the  last  "quailing  breath  — the  last  onslaughts  of 
doubt  or  fear — think  of  the  Vision  waiting — the  Eternal 
Comfort — 

'  "  Oh,  my  only  Light ! 
It  cannot  be 
That  I  am  he 
On  whom  Thy  tempests  fell  all  night !  "  ' 

The  words  fell  from  the  softened  voice  like  noble  music. 

There  was  a  pause.  Then  Catherine  raised  her  eyes  to  his. 
They  swam  in  tears,  and  yet  the  unspoken  thanks  in  them  were 
radiance  itself.  It  seemed  to  him  as  though  she  came  closer  to 
him  like  a  child  to  an  elder  who  has  soothed  and  satisfied  an 
inward  smart. 

They  walked  on  in  silence.  They  were  just  nearing  the 
swollen  river  which  roared  below  them.  On  the  opposite  bank 
two  umbrellas  were  vanishing  through  the  field  gate  into  the 
road,  but  the  vicar  had  turned  and  was  waiting  for  them.  They 
could  see  his  becloaked  figure  leaning  on  his  stick  through  the 
light  wreaths  of  mist  that  floated  above  the  tumbling  stream. 
The  abnormally  heavy  rain  had  ceased,  but  the  clouds  seemed  to 
be  dragging  along  the  very  floor  of  the  valley. 

The  stepping-stones  came  into  sight.  He  leaped  on  the  first 
and  held  out  his  hand  to  her.  When  they  started  she  would 
have  refused  his  help  with  scorn.  Now,  after  a  moment's  hesita- 
tion she  yielded,  and  he  felt  her  dear  weight  on  him  as  he  guided 
her  carefully  from  stone  to  stone.  In  reality  it  is  both  difficult 
and  risky  to  be  helped  over  stepping-stones.  You  had  much 
better  manage  for  yourself ;  and  naif  way  through  Catherine 
had  a  mind  to  tell  him  so.  But  the  words  died  on  her  lips  which 
smiled  instead.  He  could  have  wished  that  passage  from  stone 
to  stone  could  have  lasted  for  ever.  She  was  wrapped  up  gro- 
tesquely in  his  mackintosh ;  her  hat  was  all  bedraggled;  her 
gloves  dripped  in  his  ;  and  in  spite  of  all  he  could  have  vowed 
that  anything  so  lovely  as  that  delicately  cut,  gravely  smiling 
face,  swaying  above  the  rushing  brown  water,  was  never  seen 
in  Westmoreland  wilds  before. 


98  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

'  It  is  clearing,'  he  cried,  with  ready  optimism,  as  they  reached 
the  bank.  'We  shall  get  our  picnic  to-morrow  after  all — we 
must  get  it !  Promise  me  it  shall  be  fine — and  you  will  be 
there ! ' 

The  vicar  was  only  fifty  yards  away  waiting  for  them  against 
the  field  gate.    But  Robert  held  her  eagerly,  imperiously, — and 
it  seemed  to  her,  her  head  was  still  dizzy  with  the  water. 
'  Promise  ! '  he  repeated,  his  voice  dropping. 
She  could  not  stop  to  think  of  the  absurdity  of  promising  for 
Westmoreland  weather.     She  could  only  say  faintly  '  Yes  ! '  and 
so  release  her  hand. 

'  You  are  pretty  wet ! '  said  the  vicar,  looking  from  one  to 
the  other  with  a  curiosity  which  Robert's  quick  sense  divined 
at  once  was  directed  to  something  else  than  the  mere  condition 
of  their  garments.  But  Catherine  noticed  nothing  ;  she  walked 
on  wrestling  blindly  with  she  knew  not  what  till  they  reached 
the  vicarage  gate.  There  stood  Mrs.  Thornburgh,  the  light 
drizzle  into  which  the  rain  had  declined  beating  unheeded  on 
her  curls  and  ample  shoulders.  She  stared  at  Robert's  drenched 
condition,  but  he  gave  her  no  time  to  make  remarks. 

'  Don't  take  it  off,'  he  said  with  a  laughing  wave  of  the  hand 
to  Catherine  ;  '  I  will  come  for  it  to-morrow  morning.' 

And  he  ran  up  the  drive,  conscious  at  last  that  it  might  be 
prudent  to  get  himself  into  something  less  spongelike  than  his 
present  attire  as  quickly  as  possible. 
The  vicar  followed  him. 

'Don't  keep  Catherine,  my  dear.  There's  nothing  to  tell. 
Nobody's  the  worse.' 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  took  no  heed.  Opening  the  iron  gate  she 
went  through  it  on  to  the  deserted  rain-beaten  road,  laid  both 
her  hands  on  Catherine's  shoulders,  and  looked  her  straight  in 
the  eyes.  The  vicar's  anxious  hint  was  useless.  She  could 
contain  herself  no  longer.  She  had  watched  them  from  the 
vicarage  come  down  the  fell  together,  had  seen  them  cross  the 
stepping  stones,  lingeringly,  hand  in  hand. 

'  My  dear  Catherine  ! '  she  cried,  effusively  kissing  Catherine's 
glowing  cheek  under  the  shelter  of  the  laurustinus  that  made  a 
bower  of  the  gate.  '  My  dear  Catherine  ! ' 

Catherine  gazed  at  her  in  astonishment.  Mrs.  Thornburgh's 
eyes  were  all  alive,  and  swarming  with  questions.  If  it  had 
been  Rose  she  would  have  let  them  out  in  one  fell  flight.  But 
Catherine's  personality  kept  her  in  awe.  And  after  a  second, 
as  the  two  stood  together,  a  deep  flush  rose  on  Catherine's  face, 
and  an  expression  of  half -frightened  apology  dawned  in  Mrs. 
Thornburgh's. 

Catherine  drew  herself  away.  'Will  you  please  give  Mr. 
Elsmere  his  mackintosh  ?'  she  said,  taking  it  off;  'I  shan't  want 
it  this  little  way.' 

And  putting  it  on  Mrs.  Thornburgh's  arm  she  turned  away, 
walking  quickly  round  the  bend  of  the  road. 


CHAP,  vii  WESTMORELAND  99 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  watched  her  open-mouthed,  and  moved 
slowly  back  to  the  house  in  a  state  of  complete  collapse. 

'  I  always  knew ' — she  said  with  a  groan — '  I  always  knew  it 
would  never  go  right  if  it  was  Catherine !  Why  was  it  Catherine  ?' 

And  she  went  in,  still  hurling  at  Providence  the  same  vin- 
dictive query. 

Meanwhile  Catherine,  hurrying  home,  the  receding  flush 
leaving  a  sudden  pallor  behind  it,  was  twisting  her  hands  before 
her  in  a  kind  of  agony. 

'  What  have  I  been  doing  ? '  she  said  to  herself.  '  What  have 
I  been  doing  ? ' 

At  the  gate  of  Burwood  something  made  her  look  up.  She 
saw  the  girls  in  their  own  room — Agnes  was  standing  behind, 
Hose  had  evidently  rushed  forward  to  see  Catherine  come  in, 
and  now  retreated  as  suddenly  when  she  saw  her  sister 
look  up. 

Catherine  understood  it  all  in  an  instant.  '  They,  too,  are  on 
the  watch,'  she  thought  to  herself  bitterly.  The  strong  reticent 
nature  was  outraged  by  the  perception  that  she  had  been  for 
days  the  unconscious  actor  in  a  drama  of  which  her  sisters  and 
Mrs.  Thornburgh  had  been  the  silent  and  intelligent  spectators. 

She  came  down  presently  from  her  room  very  white  and 
quiet,  admitted  that  she  was  tired,  and  said  nothing  to  anybody. 
Agnes  and  Rose  noticed  the  change  at  once,  whispered  to  each 
other  when  they  found  an  opportunity,  and  foreboded  ill. 

After  their  tea-supper,  Catherine,  unperceived,  slipped  out 
of  the  little  lane  gate,  and  climbed  the  stony  path  above  the 
house  leading  on  to  the  fell.  The  rain  had  ceased,  but  the 
clouds  hung  low  and  threatening,  and  the  close  air  was 
saturated  with  moisture.  As  she  gained  the  bare  fell,  sounds  of 
water  met  her  on  all  sides.  The  river  cried  hoarsely  to  her  from 
below,  the  becks  in  the  little  ghylls  were  full  and  thunderous  ; 
and  beside  her  over  the  smooth  grass  slid  many  a  new-born 
rivulet,  the  child  of  the  storm,  and  destined  to  vanish  with  the 
night.  Catherine's  soul  went  out  to  welcome  the  gray  damp  of 
the  hills.  She  knew  them  best  in  this  mood.  They  were  thus 
most  her  own. 

She  climbed  on  till  at  last  she  reached  the  crest  of  the  ridge. 
Behind  her  lay  the  valley,  and  on  its  further  side  the  fells  she 
had  crossed  in  the  afternoon.  Before  her  spread  a  long  green 
vale,  compared  to  which  Whindale  with  its  white  road,  its 
church,  and  parsonage,  and  scattered  houses,  was  the  great 
world  itself.  Marrisdale  had  no  road  and  not  a  single  house. 
As  Catherine  descended  into  it  she  saw  not  a  sign  of  human 
life.  There  were  sheep  grazing  in  the  silence  of  the  long  June 
twilight ;  the  blackish  walls  ran  down  and  up  again,  dividing 
the  green  hollow  with  melancholy  uniformity.  Here  and  there 
was  a  sheepfold,  suggesting  the  bleakness  of  winter  nights- 
and  here  and  there  a  rough  stone  barn  for  storing  fodder.  Ana 
beyond  the  vale,  eastwards  and  northwards,  Catherine  looked 


100  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

out  upon  a  wild  _  sea  of  moors  wrapped  in  mists,  sullen  and 
storm-beaten,  while  to  the  left  the  clouds  hung  deepest  and 
inkiest  over  the  high  points  of  the  Ullswater  mountains. 

When  she  was  once  below  the  pass,  man  and  his  world  were 
shut  out.  The  girl  figure  in  the  blue  cloak  and  hood  was  abso- 
lutely alone.  She  descended  till  she  reached  a  point  where  a 
little  stream  had  been  turned  into  a  stone  trough  for  cattle. 
Above  it  stood  a  gnarled  and  solitary  thorn.  Catherine  sank 
down  on  a  rock  at  the  foot  of  the  tree.  It  was  a  seat  she  knew 
well ;  she  had  lingered  there  with  her  father  ;  she  had  thought 
and  prayed  there  as  girl  and  woman ;  she  had  wrestled  there 
often  with  despondency  or  grief,  or  some  of  those  subtle  spiritual 
temptations  which  were  all  her  pure  youth  had  known,  till  the 
inner  light  had  dawned  again,  and  the  humble  enraptured  soul 
could  almost  have  traced  amid  the  shadows  of  that  dappled 
moorland  world?  between  her  and  the  clouds,  the  white  stoles 
and  '  sleeping  wings '  of  ministering  spirits. 

But  no  wrestle  had  ever  been  so  hard  as  this.  And  with  what 
fierce  suddenness  had  it  come  upon  her  !  She  looked  back  over 
the  day  with  bewilderment.  She  could  see  dimly  that  the 
Catherine  who  had  started  on  that  Shanmoor  walk  had  been 
full  of  vague  misgivings  other  than  those  concerned  with  a  few 
neglected  duties.  There  had  been  an  undefined  sense  of  unrest, 
of  difference,  of  broken  equilibrium.  She  had  shown  it  in  the 
way  in  which  at  first  she  had  tried  to  keep  herself  and  Kobert 
Elsmere  apart. 

And  then  ;  beyond  the  departure  from  Shanmoor  she  seemed 
to  lose  the  thread  of  her  own  history.  Memory  was  drowned  in 
a  feeling  to  which  the  resisting  soul  as  yet  would  give  no  name. 
She  laid  her  head  on  her  knees  trembling.  She  heard  again  the 
sweet  imperious  tones  with  which  he  broke  down  her  opposition 
about  the  cloak  ;  she  felt  again  the  grasp  of  his  steadying  hand 
on  hers. 

But  it  was  only  for  a  very  few  minutes  that  she  drifted  thus. 
She  raised  her  head  again,  scourging  herself  in  shame  and  self- 
reproach,  recapturing  the  empire  of  the  soul  with  a  strong  effort. 
She  set  herself  to  a  stern  analysis  of  the  whole  situation. 
Clearly  Mrs.  Thornburgh  and  her  sisters  had  been  aware  for 
some  indefinite  time  that  Mr.  Elsmere  had  been  showing  a 
peculiar  interest  in  her.  Their  eyes  had  been  open.  She  realised 
now  with  hot  cheeks  how  many  meetings  and  tete-a-tetes  had 
been  managed  for  her  and  Elsmere,  and  how  complacently  she 
had  fallen  into  Mrs.  Thornburgh's  snares. 

'  Have  I  encouraged  him  ? '  she  asked  herself  sternly. 

'  Yes,'  cried  the  smarting  conscience. 

'  Can  I  marry  him  ? ' 

'  No,'  said  conscience  again  ;  '  not  without  deserting  your  post, 
not  without  betraying  your  trust.' 

What  post  ?  What  trust  ?  Ah,  conscience  was  ready  enough 
with  the  answer.  Was  it  not  just  ten  years  since,  as  a  girl  of 


CHAP,  vii  WESTMORELAND  101 

sixteen,  prematurely  old  and  thoughtful,  she  had  sat  beside  her 
father's  deathbed,  while  her  delicate  hysterical  mother,  in  a  state 
of  utter  collapse,  was  kept  away  from  him  by  the  doctors  1  She 
could  see  the  drawn  face,  the  restless  melancholy  eyes.  '  Cath- 
erine, my  darling,  you  are  the  strong  one.  They  will  look  to 
you.  Support  them.'  And  she  could  see  in  imagination  her 
own  young  face  pressed  against  the  pillows.  'Yes,  father, 
always — always  ! ' — '  Catherine,  life  is  harder,  the  narrow  way 
narrower  than  ever.  I  die' — and  memory  caught  still  the 
piteous,  long-drawn  breath  by  which  the  voice  was  broken — '  in 
much — much  perplexity  about  many  things.  You  have  a  clear 
soul,  an  iron  will.  Strengthen  the  others.  Bring  them  safe  to 
the  day  of  account.'— '  Yes,  father,  with  God's  help.  Oh,  with 
God's  help!' 

That  long-past  dialogue  is  clear  and  sharp  to  her  now,  as 
though  it  were  spoken  afresh  in  her  ears.  And  how  has  she 
kept  her  pledge  ?  She  looks  back  humbly  on  her  life  of  incessant 
devotion,  on  the  tie  of  long  dependence  which  has  bound  to  her 
her  weak  and  widowed  mother,  on  her  relations  to  her  sisters, 
the  efforts  she  has  made  to  train  them  in  the  spirit  of  her  father's 
life  and  beliefs. 

Have  those  efforts  reached  their  term  1  Can  it  be  said  in  any 
sense  that  her  work  is  done,  her  promise  kept  ? 

Oh,  no — no !  she  cries  to  herself  with  vehemence.  Her 
mother  depends  on  her  every  day  and  hour  for  protection,  com- 
fort, enjoyment.  The  girls  are  at  the  opening  of  life, — Agnes 
twenty,  llose  eighteen,  with  all  experience  to  come.  And 
Rose —  -  Ah  !  at  the  thought  of  Rose,  Catherine's  heart  sinks 
deeper  and  deeper — she  feels  a  culprit  before  her  father's 
memory.  What  is  it  has  gone  so  desperately  wrong  with  her 
training  of  the  child !  Surely  she  has  given  love  enough, 
anxious  thought  enough,  and  here  is  Rose  only  fighting  to  be 
free  from  the  yoke  of  her  father's  wishes,  from  the  galling 
pressure  of  the  family  tradition ! 

No.  Her  task  has  just  now  reached  its  most  difficult,  its 
most  critical,  moment.  How  can  she  leave  it  ?  Impossible. 

What  claim  can  she  put  against  these  supreme  claims — of  her 
promise,  her  mother's  and  sisters'  need  ? 

His  claim  ?  Oh,  no — no !  She  admits  with  soreness  and 
humiliation  unspeakable  that  she  has  done  him  wrong.  If  he 
loves  her  she  has  opened  the  way  thereto  ;  she  confesses  in  her 
scrupulous  honesty  that  when  the  inevitable  withdrawal  comes 
she  will  have  given  him  cause  to  think  of  her  hardly,  slightingly. 
She  flinches  painfully  under  the  thought.  But  it  does  not  alter 
the  matter.  This  girl,  brought  up  in  the  austerest  school  of 
Christian  self-government,  knows  nothing  of  the  divine  rights 
of  passion.  Half  modern  literature  is  based  upon  them.  Cath- 
erine Leyburn  knew  of  no  supreme  right  but  the  right  of  God 
to  the  obedience  of  man. 

Oh,  and  besides — besides — it  is  impossible  that  he  should  care 


102  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

so  very  much.  The  time  is  so  short — there  is  so  little  in  her, 
comparatively,  to  attract  a  man  of  such  resource,  such  attain- 
ments, such  access  to  the  best  things  of  life. 

She  cannot — in  a  kind  of  terror — she  will  not,  believe  in  her 
own  love -worthiness,  in  her  own  power  to  deal  a  lasting 
wound. 

Then  her  own  claim  ?  Has  she  any  claim,  has  the  poor  bound- 
ing heart  that  she  cannot  silence,  do  what  she  will,  through  all 
this  strenuous  debate,  no  claim  to  satisfaction,  to  joy  1 

She  locks  her  hands  round  her  knees,  conscious,  poor  soul, 
that  the  worst  struggle  is  here,  the  quickest  agony  here.  But 
she  does  not  waver  for  an  instant.  And  her  weapons  are  all 
ready.  The  inmost,  soul  of  her  is  a  fortress  well  stored,  whence 
at  any  moment  the  mere  personal  craving  of  the  natural  man 
can  be  met,  repulsed,  slain. 

'  Man  approacheth  so  much  the  nearer  unto  God  the  farther  he 
departeth  from  all  earthly  comfort.' 

'  If  thou  couldst  perfectly  annihilate  thyself  and  empty  thyselj 
of  all  created  love,  then  should  I  be  constrained  to  flow  into  thee 
^o^th  greater  abundance  of  grace.' 

'  When  thou  lookest  unto  the  creature  the  sight  of  the  Creator  is 
withdrawn  from  thee.' 

1  Learn  in  all  things  to  overcome  thyself  for  the  love  of  thy 
Creator.  .  .  .' 

She  presses  the  sentence  she  has  so  often  meditated  in  her 
long  solitary  walks  about  the  mountains  into  her  heart.  And 
one  fragment  of  George  Herbert  especially  rings  in  her  ears, 
solemnly,  funereally — 

1  Thy  Saviour  sentenced  joy  ! ' 

Ay,  sentenced  it  for  ever — the  personal  craving,  the  selfish 
need,  that  must  be  filled  at  any  cost.  In  the  silence  of  the 
descending  night  Catherine  quietly,  with  tears,  carried  out  that 
sentence,  and  slew  her  young  new-born  joy  at  the  feet  of  the 
Master. 

She  stayed  where  she  was  for  a  while  after  this  crisis  in  a 
kind  of  bewilderment  and  stupor,  but  maintaining  a  perfect 
outward  tranquillity.  Then  there  was  a  curious  little  epilogue. 

'It  is  all  over,'  she  said  to  herself  tenderly.  'But  he  has 
taught  me  so  much — he  has  been  so  good  to  me — he  is  so  good  ! 
Let  me  take  to  my  heart  some  counsel — some  word  of  his,  and 
obey  it  sacredly — silently — for  these  days'  sake.' 

Then  she  fell  thinking  again,  and  she  remembered  their  talk 
about  Hose.  How  often  she  had  pondered  it  since !  In  this 
intense  trance  of  feeling  it  breaks  upon  her  finally  that  he  is 
right.  May  it  not  be  that  he  with  his  clearer  thought,  his 
wider  knowledge  of  life,  has  laid  his  finger  on  the  weak  point 
in  her  guardianship  of  her  sisters  ?  '  I  have  tried  to  stifle  her 
passion,'  she  thought,  '  to  push  it  out  of  the  way  as  a  hindrance. 
Ought  I  not  rather  to  have  taught  her  to  make  of  it  a  step  in 


CHAP,  vii  WESTMORELAND  103 

the  ladder — to  have  moved  her  to  bring  her  gifts  to  the  altar  1 
Oh,  let  me  take  his  word  for  it — be  ruled  by  him  in  this  one 
thing,  once ! ' 

She  bowed  her  face  on  her  knees  again.  It  seemed  to  her 
that  she  had  thrown  herself  at  Elsmere's  feet,  that  her  cheek 
was  pressed  against  that  young  brown  hand  of  his.  How  long 
the  moment  lasted  she  never  knew.  When  at  last  she  rose  stiff 
and  weary,  darkness  was  overtaking  even  the  lingering  northern 
twilight.  The  angry  clouds  had  dropped  lower  on  the  moors ; 
a  few  sheep  beside  the  glimmering  stone  trough  showed  dimly 
white ;  the  night  wind  was  sighing  through  the  untenanted 
valley  and  the  scanty  branches  of  the  thorn.  White  mists  lay 
along  the  hollow  of  the  dale ;  they  moved  weirdly  under  the 
breeze.  She  could  have  fancied  them  a  troop  01  wraiths  to 
whom  she  had  flung  her  warm  crushed  heart,  and  who  were 
bearing  it  away  to  burial. 

As  she  came  slowly  over  the  pass  and  down  the  Whindale 
side  of  the  fell  a  clear  purpose  was  in  her  mind.  Agnes  had 
talked  to  her  only  that  morning  of  Rose  and  Rose's  desire,  and 
she  had  received  the  news  with  her  habitual  silence. 

The  house  was  lit  up  when  she  returned.  Her  mother  had 
gone  upstairs.  Catherine  went  to  her,  but  even  Mrs.  Leyburn 
discovered  that  she  looked  worn  out,  and  she  was  sent  off  to 
bed.  She  went  along  the  passage  quickly  to  Rose's  room,  listen- 
ing a  moment  at  the  door.  Yes,  Rose  was  inside,  crooning  some 
German  song,  and  apparently  alone.  She  knocked  and  went  in. 

Rose  was  sitting  on  the  edge  of  her  bed,  a  white  dressing- 
gown  over  her  shoulders,  her  hair  in  a  glorious  confusion  all 
about  her.  She  was  swaying  backwards  and  forwards  dreamily 
singing,  and  she  started  up  when  she  saw  Catherine. 

'  Roschen,'  said  the  elder  sister,  going  up  to  her  with  a  tremor 
of  heart,  and  putting  her  motherly  arms  round  the  curly  golden 
hair  and  the  half -covered  shoulders,  '  you  never  told  me  of  that 
letter  from  Manchester,  but  Agnes  did.  Did  you  think, 
Roschen,  I  would  never  let  you  have  your  way  ?  Oh,  I  am  not 
so  hard  !  I  may  have  been  wrong — I  think  I  have  been  wrong  • 
you  shall  do  what  you  will,  Roschen.  If  you  want  to  go,  I  will 
ask  mother.' 

Rose,  pushing  herself  away  with  one  hand,  stood  staring. 
She  was  struck  dumb  by  this  sudden  breaking  down  of 
Catherine's  long  resistance.  And  what  a  strange  white  Cath- 
erine !  What  did  it  mean  ?  Catherine  withdrew  her  arms  with 
a  little  sigh  and  moved  away. 

'  I  just  came  to  tell  you  that,  Roschen,'  she  said,  '  but  I  am 
very  tired  and  must  not  stay.' 

Catherine  '  very  tired ' !  Rose  thought  the  skies  must  be 
falling. 

'  Cathie  ! '  she  cried,  leaping  forward  just  as  her  sister  gained 
the  door.  'Oh,  Cathie,  you  are  an  angel,  and  I  am  a  nasty, 
odious  little  wretch.  But  oh,  tell  me,  what  is  the  matter  ? ' 


104  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

And  she  flung  her  strong  young  arms  round  Catherine  with 
a  passionate  strength. 

The  elder  sister  struggled  to  release  herself. 

'  Let  me  go,  Hose,'  she  said  in  a  low  voice.  '  Oh,  you  must  let 
me  go ! ' 

And  wrenching  herself  free,  she  drew  her  hand  over  her  eyes 
as  though  trying  to  drive  away  the  mist  from  them. 

'  Good-night !    Sleep  well.' 

And  she  disappeared,  shutting  the  door  noiselessly  after  her. 
Rose  stood  staring  a  moment,  and  then  swept  off  her  feet  by  a 
flood  of  many  feelings — remorse,  love,  fear,  svmpathy — threw 
herself  face  downwards  on  her  bed  and  burst  into  a  passion  of 
tears. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

CATHERINE  was  much  perplexed  as  to  how  she  was  to  carry  out 
her  resolution  ;  she  pondered  over  it  through  much  of  the  night. 
She  was  painfully  anxious  to  make  Elsmere  understand  without 
a  scene,  without  a  definite  proposal  and  a  definite  rejection.  It 
was  no  use  letting  things  drift.  Something  brusque  and  marked 
there  must  be.  She  quietly  made  her  dispositions. 

It  was  long  after  the  gray  vaporous  morning  stole  on  the 
hills  before  she  fell  lightly,  restlessly  asleep.  To  her  healthful 
youth  a  sleepless  night  was  almost  unknown.  She  wondered 
through  the  long  hours  of  it,  whether  now,  like  other  women, 
she  had  had  her  story,  passed  through  her  one  supreme  moment, 
and  she  thought  of  one  or  two  worthy  old  maids  she  knew  in 
the  neighbourhood  with  a  new  and  curious  pity.  Had  any  of 
them,  too,  gone  down  into  Marrisdale  and  come  up  widowed 
indeed  ? 

All  through,  no  doubt,  there  was  a  certain  melancholy  pride 
in  her  own  spiritual  strength.  'It  was  not  mine,'  she  would 
have  said  with  perfect  sincerity, '  but  God's.'  Still,  whatever  its 
source,  it  had  been  there  at  command,  and  the  reflection  carried 
with  it  a  sad  sense  of  security.  It  was  as  though  a  soldier  after 
his  first  skirmish  should  congratulate  himself  on  being  bullet- 
proof. 

To  be  sure,  there  was  an  intense  trouble  and  disquiet  in  the 
thought  that  she  and  Mr.  Elsmere  must  meet  again,  probably 
many  times.  The  period  of  his  original  invitation  had  been 
warmly  extended  by  the  Thornburghs.  She  believed  he  meant 
to  stay  another  week  or  ten  days  in  the  valley.  But  in  the 
spiritual  exaltation  of  the  night  she  felt  herself  equal  to  any 
conflict,  any  endurance,  and  she  fell  asleep,  the  hands  clasped 
on  her  breast  expressing  a  kind  of  resolute  patience,  like  those 
of  some  old  sepulchral  monument. 

The  following  morning  Elsmere  examined  the  clouds  and  the 
barometer  with  abnormal  interest.  The  day  was  sunless  and 


CHAP,  vni  WESTMORELAND  105 

lowering,  but  not  raining,  and  he  represented  to  Mrs.  Thorn- 
burgh,  with  a  hypocritical  assumption  of  the  practical  man, 
that  with  rugs  and  mackintoshes  it  was  possible  to  picnic  on 
the  dampest  grass.  But  he  could  not  make  out  the  vicar's  wife. 
She  was  all  sighs  and  flightiness.  She  '  supposed  they  could  go,' 
and  '  didn't  see  what  good  it  would  do  them ' ;  she  had  twenty 
different  views,  and  all  of  them  more  or  less  mixed  up  with 
pettishness,  as  to  the  best  place  for  a  picnic  on  a  gray  day  ;  and 
at  last  she  grew  so  difficult  that  Robert  suspected  something 
desperately  wrong  with  the  household,  and  withdrew  lest  male 
guests  might  be  in  the  way.  Then  she  pursued  him  into  the 
study  and  thrust  a  Spectator  into  his  hands,  begging  him  to 
convey  it  to  Burwood.  She  asked  it  lugubriously  with  many 
sighs,  her  cap  much  askew.  Robert  could  have  kissed  her,  curls 
and  all,  one  moment  for  suggesting  the  errand,  and  the  next 
could  almost  have  signed  her  committal  to  the  county  lunatic 
asylum  with  a  clear  conscience.  What  an  extraordinary  person 
it  was ! 

Off  he  went,  however,  with  his  Spectator  under  his  arm,  whist- 
ling. Mrs.  Thornburgh  caught  the  sounds  through  an  open 
window,  and  tore  the  flannel  across  she  was  preparing  for  a 
mothers'  meeting  with  a  noise  like  the  rattle  of  musketry. 
Whistling  !  She  would  like  to  know  what  grounds  he  had  for 
it,  indeed  !  She  always  knew — she  always  said,  and  she  would 
go  on  saying — that  Catherine  Leyburn  would  die  an  old  maid. 

Meanwhile  Robert  had  strolled  across  to  Burwood  with  the 
lightest  heart.  By  way  of  keeping  all  his  anticipations  within 
the  bounds  of  strict  reason,  he  told  himself  that  it  was  impos- 
sible he  should  see  '  her '  in  the  morning.  She  was  always  busy 
in  the  morning. 

He  approached  the  house  as  a  Catholic  might  approach  a 
shrine.  That  was  her  window,  that  upper  casement  with  the 
little  Banksia  rose  twining  round  it.  One  night,  when  he  and 
the  vicar  had  been  out  late  on  the  hills,  he  had  seen  a  light 
streaming  from  it  across  the  valley,  and  had  thought  how  the 
mistress  of  the  maiden  solitude  within  shone  'in  a  naughty 
world.' 

In  the  drive  he  met  Mrs.  Leyburn,  who  was  strolling  about 
the  garden.  She  at  once  informed  him  with  much  languid 
plaintiveness  that  Catherine  had  gone  to  Whinborough  for  the 
day,  and  would  not  be  able  to  join  the  picnic. 

Elsmere  stood  still. 

'  Gone  ! '  he  cried.  '  But  it  was  all  arranged  with  her  yester- 
day ! '  Mrs.  Leyburn  shrugged  her  shoulders.  She  too  was 
evidently  much  put  out. 

'  So  I  told  her.  But  you  know,  Mr.  Elsmere ' — and  the  gentle 
widow  dropped  her  voice  as  though  communicating  a  secret — 
'  when  Catherine's  once  made  up  her  mind,  you  may  as  well  try 
to  dig  away  High  Fell  as  move  her.  She  asked  me  to  tell  Mrs. 
Thornburgh — will  you,  please  ? — that  she  found  it  was  her  day 


106  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

for  the  orphan  asylum,  and  one  or  two  other  pieces  of  business, 
and  she  must  go.' 

'  Mrs.  Thombtirgh  ! '  And  not  a  word  for  him — for  him  to 
whom  she  had  given  her  promise?  She  had  gone  to  Whin- 
borough  to  avoid  him,  and  she  had  gone  in  the  brusquest  way, 
that  it  might  be  unmistakable. 

The  young  man  stood  with  his  hands  thrust  into  the  pockets 
of  his  long  coat,  hearing  with  half  an  ear  the  remarks  that  Mrs. 
Leyburn  was  making  to  him  about  the  picnic.  Was  the  wretched 
thing  to  come  off  after  all  1 

He  was  too  proud  and  sore  to  suggest  an  alternative.  But 
Mrs.  Thornburgh  managed  that  for  him.  When  he  got  back, 
he  told  the  vicar  in  the  hall  of  Miss  Leyburn's  flight  in  the 
fewest  possible  words,  and  then  his  long  legs  vanished  up  the 
stairs  in  a  twinkling,  and  the  door  of  his  room  shut  behind  him. 
A  few  minutes  afterwards  Mrs.  Thornburgh's  shrill  voice  was 
heard  in  the  hall  calling  to  the  servant. 

'  Sarah,  let  the  hamper  alone.     Take  out  the  chickens.' 

And  a  minute  after  the  vicar  came  up  to  his  door. 

'  Elsmere,  Mrs.  Thornburgh  thinks  the  day  is  too  uncertain  ; 
better  put  it  off.' 

To  which  Elsmere  from  inside  replied  with  a  vigorous  assent. 
The  vicar  slowly  descended  to  tackle  his  spouse,  who  seemed  to 
have  established  herself  for  the  morning  in  his  sanctum,  though 
the  parish  accounts  were  clamouring  to  be  done,  and  this  morn- 
ing in  the  week  belonged  to  them  by  immemorial  usage. 

But  Mrs.  Thornburgh  was  unmanageable.  She  sat  opposite 
to  him  with  one  hand  on  each  knee,  solemnly  demanding  of  him 
if  he  knew  what  was  to  be  done  with  young  women  nowadays, 
because  she  didn't. 

The  tormented  vicar  declined  to  be  drawn  into  so  illimitable  a 
subject,  recommended  patience,  declared  that  it  might  be  all  a 
mistake,  and  tried  hard  to  absorb  himself  in  the  consideration 
of  2s.  8d.  plus  2s.  lid.  minus  9d. 

'  And  I  suppose,  William,'  said  his  wife  to  him  at  last,  with 
withering  sarcasm,  '  that  you'd  sit  by  and  see  Catherine  break 
that  young  man's  heart,  and  send  him  back  to  his  mother  no 
better  than  he  came  here,  in  spite  of  all  the  beef -tea  and  jelly 
Sarah  and  I  have  been  putting  into  him,  and  never  lift  a  finger. 
You'd  see  his  life  Hasted  and  you'd  do  nothing — nothing,  I 
suppose.' 

And  she  fixed  him  with  a  fiercely  interrogative  eye. 

'  Of  course,'  cried  the  vicar,  roused  ;  '  I  should  think  so.   What 

food  did  an  outsider  ever  get  by  meddling  in  a  love  affair? 
ake  care  of  yourself,  Emma.     If  the  girl  doesn't  care  for  him, 
you  can't  make  her.' 

The  vicar's  wife  rose,  the  upturned  corners  of  her  mouth  say- 
ing unutterable  things. 

'  Doesn't  care  for  him  ! '  she  echoed  in  a  tone  which  implied 
that  her  husband's  headpiece  was  past  praying  for. 


CHAP,  vin  WESTMORELAND  107 

'  Yes,  doesn't  care  for  him  ! '  said  the  vicar,  nettled.  '  What 
else  should  make  her  give  him  a  snub  like  this  1 ' 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  looked  at  him  again  with  exasperation. 
Then  a  curious  expression  stole  into  her  eves. 

'  Oh,  the  Lord  only  knows  ! '  she  said,  with  a  hasty  freedom  of 
speech  which  left  the  vicar  feeling  decidedly  uncomfortable  as 
she  shut  the  door  after  her. 

However,  if  the  Higher  Powers  alone  knew,  Mrs.  Thornburgh 
was  convinced  that  she  could  make  a  very  shrewd  guess  at  the 
causes  of  Catherine's  behaviour.  In  her  opinion  it  was  all  pure 
'  cussedness.'  Catherine  Leyburn  had  always  conducted  her  life 
on  principles  entirely  different  from  those  of  other  people.  Mrs. 
Thornburgh  wholly  denied,  as  she  sat  bridling  by  herself,  that 
it  was  a  Christian  necessity  to  make  yourself  and  other  people 
uncomfortable.  Yet  this  was  what  this  perverse  young  woman 
was  always  doing.  Here  was  a  charming  young  man  who  had 
fallen  in  love  with  her  at  first  sight,  and  had  done  his  best  to 
make  the  fact  plain  to  her  in  the  most  chivalrous  devoted  ways. 
Catherine  encourages  him,  walks  with  him,  talks  with  him,  is 
for  a  whole  three  weeks  more  gay  and  cheerful  and  more  like 
other  girls  than  she  has  ever  been  known  to  be,  and  then,  at 
the  end  of  it,  just  when  everybody  is  breathlessly  awaiting  the 
natural  denouement,  goes  off  to  spend  the  day  that  should  have 
been  the  day  of  her  betrothal  in  pottering  about  orphan  asylums, 
leaving  everybody,  but  especially  the  poor  young  man,  to  look 
ridiculous !  No,  Mrs.  Thornburgh  had  no  patience  with  her — 
none  at  all.  It  was  all  because  she  would  not  be  happy  like 
anybody  else,  but  must  needs  set  herself  up  to  be  peculiar.  Why 
not  live  on  a  pillar,  and  go  into  hair-shirts  at  once  1  Then  the 
rest  of  the  world  would  know  what  to  be  at. 

Meanwhile  Rose  was  in  no  small  excitement.  While  her 
mother  and  Elsmere  had  been  talking  in  the  garden  she  had 
been  discreetly  waiting  in  the  back  behind  the  angle  of  the 
house,  and  when  she  saw  Elsmere  walk  off  she  followed  him 
with  eager  sympathetic  eyes. 

'  Poor  fellow ! '  she  said  to  herself,  but  this  time  with  the 
little  tone  of  patronage  which  a  girl  of  eighteen,  conscious  of 
graces  and  good  looks,  never  shrinks  from  assuming  towards  an 
elder  male,  especially  a  male  in  love  with  some  one  else.  'I 
wonder  whether  he  thinks  he  knows  anything  about  Catherine.' 

But  her  own  feeling  to-day  was  very  soft  and  complex. 
Yesterday  it  had  been  all  hot  rebellion.  To-day  it  was  all 
remorse  and  wondering  curiosity.  What  had  brought  Catherine 
into  her  room,  with  that  white  face,  and  that  bewildering  change 
of  policy  ?  What  had  made  her  do  this  brusque,  discourteous 
thing  to-day  1  Rose,  having  been  delayed  by  the  loss  of  one  of 
her  goloshes  in  a  bog,  had  been  once  near  her  and  Elsmere  during 
that  dripping  descent  from  Shanmoor.  They  had  been  so  clearly 
absorbed  in  one  another  that  she  had  fled  on  guiltily  to  Agnes, 
golosh  in  hand,  without  waiting  to  put  it  on ;  confident,  how- 


108  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

ever,  that  neither  Elsmere  nor  Catherine  had  been  aware  of  her 
little  adventure.  And  at  the  Shanmoor  tea  Catherine  herself 
had  discussed  the  picnic,  offering,  in  fact,  to  guide  the  party  to 
a  particular  ghyll  in  High  Fell,  better  known  to  her  than  any 
one  else. 

'  Oh,  of  course  it's  our  salvation  in  this  world  and  the  next 
that's  in  the  way,'  thought  Rose,  sitting  crouched  up  in  a  grassy 
nook  in  the  garden,  her  shoulders  up  to  her  ears,  her  chin  in  her 
hands.  '  I  wish  to  goodness  Catherine  wouldn't  think  so  much 
about  mine,  at  any  rate.  I  hate,'  added  this  incorrigible  young 
person — 'I  hate  being  the  third  part  of  a  "moral  obstacle"  against 
my  will.  I  declare  I  don't  believe  we  should  any  of  us  go  to 
perdition  even  if  Catherine  did  marry.  And  what  a  wretch  I 
am  to  think  so  after  last  night !  Oh  dear,  I  wish  she'd  let  me 
do  something  for  her ;  I  wish  she'd  ask  me  to  black  her  boots 
for  her,  or  put  in  her  tuckers,  or  tidy  her  drawers  for  her,  or 
anything  worse  still,  and  I'd  do  it  and  welcome  ! ' 

It  was  getting  uncomfortably  serious  all  round,  Rose  admitted. 
But  there  was  one  element  of  comedy  besides  Mrs.  Thornburgh, 
and  that  was  Mrs.  Leyburn's  unconsciousness. 

'  Mamma  is  too  good,'  thought  the  girl,  with  a  little  ripple  of 
laughter.  '  She  takes  it  as  a  matter  of  course  that  all  the  world 
should  admire  us,  and  she'd  scorn  to  believe  that  anybody  did 
it  from  interested  motives.' 

Which  was  perfectly  true.  Mrs.  Leyburn  was  too  devoted 
to  her  daughters  to  feel  any  fidgety  interest  in  their  marrying. 
Of  course  the  most  eligible  persons  would  be  only  too  thankful 
to  marry  them  when  the  moment  came.  Meanwhile  her  devo- 
tion was  in  no  need  of  the  confirming  testimony  of  lovers.  It 
was  sufficient  in  itself,  and  kept  her  mind  gently  occupied  from 
morning  till  night.  If  it  had  occurred  to  her  to  notice  that 
Robert  Elsmere  had  been  paying  special  attentions  to  any  one 
in  the  family,  she  would  have  suggested  with  perfect  naivete 
that  it  was  herself.  For  he  had  been  to  her  the  very  pink  of 
courtesy  and  consideration,  and  she  was  of  opinion  that  '  poor 
Richard's  views '  of  the  degeneracy  of  Oxford  men  would  have 
been  modified  could  he  have  seen  this  particular  specimen. 

Later  on  in  the  morning  Rose  had  been  out  giving  Bob  a  run, 
while  Agnes  drove  with  her  mother.  On  the  way  home  she 
overtook  Elsmere  returning  from  an  errand  for  the  vicar. 

'  It  is  not  so  bad,'  she  said  to  him,  laughing,  pointing  to  the 
sky  ;  '  we  really  might  have  gone.' 

'  Oh,  it  would  have  been  cheerless,'  he  said  simply.  His  look 
of  depression  amazed  her.  She  felt  a  quick  movement  of  sym- 
pathy, a  wild  wish  to  bid  him  cheer  up  and  fight  it  out.  If  she 
could  just  have  shown  him  Catherine  as  she  looked  last  night ! 
Why  couldn't  she  talk  it  out  with  him  1  Absurd  conventions  ! 
She  had  half  a  mind  to  try. 

But  the  grave  look  of  the  man  beside  her  deterred  even  her 
young  half -childish  audacity. 


(  HM-.  via  WESTMORELAND  109 

'  Catherine  will  have  a  good  day  for  all  her  business,'  she  said 
carelessly. 

He  assented  quietly.  Oh,  after  that  hand-shake  on  the  bridge 
yesterday  she  could  not  stand  it, — she  must  give  him  a  hint 
how  the  land  lay. 

'I  suppose  she  will  spend  the  afternoon  with  Aunt  Ellen. 
Mr.  Elsmere,  what  did  you  think  of  Aunt  Ellen  ? ' 

Elsmere  started,  and  could  not  help  smiling  into  the  young 
girl's  beautiful  eyes,  which  were  radiant  with  fun. 

'  A  most  estimable  person,'  he  said.  '  Are  you  on  good  terms 
with  her,  Miss  Hose  ? ' 

'  Oh  dear,  no  ! '  she  said,  with  a  little  face.  '  I'm  not  a  Ley- 
burn  ;  I  wear  aesthetic  dresses,  and  Aunt  Ellen  has  "  special 
leadings  of  the  spirit"  to  the  effect  that  the  violin  is  a  soul- 
destroying  instrument.  Oh  dear  ! '  —  and  the  girl's  mouth 
twisted  — '  it's  alarming  to  think,  if  Catherine  hadn't  been 
Catherine,  how  like  Aunt  Ellen  she  might  have  been  ! ' 

She  flashed  a  mischievous  look  at  him,  and  thrilled  as  she 
caught  the  sudden  change  of  expression  in  his  face. 

'  Your  sister  has  the  Westmoreland  strength  in  her — one  can 
see  that,'  he  said,  evidently  speaking  with  some  difficulty. 

'  Strength  !  Oh  yes.  Catherine  has  plenty  of  strength,'  cried 
Rose,  and  then  was  silent  a  moment  'You  know,  Mr.  Elsmere,' 
she  went  on  at  last,  obeying  some  inward  impulse — '  or  perhaps 
you  don't  know — that,  at  home,  we  are  all  Catherine's  creatures. 
She  does  exactly  what  she  likes  with  us.  When  my  father  died 
she  was  sixteen,  Agnes  was  ten,  I  was  eight.  We  came  here  to 
live — we  were  not  very  rich  of  course,  and  mamma  wasn't  strong. 
Well,  she  did  everything  :  she  taught  us — we  have  scarcely  had 
any  teacher  but  her  since  then  ;  she  did  most  of  the  housekeep- 
ing ;  and  you  can  see  for  yourself  what  she  does  for  the  neigh- 
bours and  poor  folk.  She  is  never  ill,  she  is  never  idle,  she 
always  knows  her  own  mind.  We  owe  everything  we  are, 
almost  everything  we  have,  to  her.  Her  nursing  has  kept 
mamma  alive  through  one  or  two  illnesses.  Our  lawyer  says 
he  never  knew  any  business  affairs  better  managed  than  ours, 
and  Catherine  manages  them.  The  one  thing  she  never  takes 
any  care  or  thought  for  is  herself.  What  we  should  do  without 
her  I  can't  imagine ;  and  yet  sometimes  I  think  if  it  goes  on 
much  longer  none  of  us  three  will  have  any  character  of  out- 
own  left.  After  all,  you  know,  it  may  be  good  for  the  weak 
people  to  struggle  on  their  own  feet,  if  the  strong  would  only 
believe  it,  instead  of  always  being  carried.  The  strong  people 
needn't  be  always  trampling  on  themselves,  —  if  they  only 
knew ' 

She  stopped  abruptly,  flushing  scarlet  over  her  own  daring. 
Her  eyes  were  feverishly  bright,  and  her  voice  vibrated  under 
a  strange  mixture  of  feelings  —  sympathy,  reverence,  and  a 
passionate  inner  admiration  struggling  with  rebellion  and 
protest. 


110  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

They  had  reached  the  gate  of  the  vicarage.  Elsmere  stopped 
and  looked  at  his  companion  with  a  singular  lightening  of  ex- 
pression. He  saw  perfectly  that  the  young  impetuous  creature 
understood  him,  that  she  felt  his  cause  was  not  prospering,  and 
that  she  wanted  to  help  him.  He  saw  that  what  she  meant  by 
this  picture  of  their  common  life  was  that  no  one  need  expect 
Catherine  Leyburn  to  be  an  easy  prey;  that  she  wanted  to 
impress  on  him  in  her  eager  way  that  such  lives  as  her  sister's 
were  not  to  be  gathered  at  a  touch,  without  difficulty,  from  the 
branch  that  bears  them.  She  was  exhorting  him  to  courage,— 
nay,  he  caught  more  than  exhortation — a  sort  of  secret  message 
from  her  bright  excited  looks  and  incoherent  speech  that  made 
his  heart  leap.  But  pride  and  delicacy  forbade  him  to  put  his 
feeling  into  words. 

'  You  don't  hope  to  persuade  me  that  your  sister  reckons  you 
among  the  weak  persons  of  the  world  ? '  he  said,  laughing,  his 
hand  on  the  gate.  Rose  could  have  blessed  him  for  thus  turning 
the  conversation.  What  on  earth  could  she  have  said  next '{ 

She  stood  bantering  a  little  longer,  and  then  ran  off  with  Bob. 

Elsmere  passed  the  rest  of  the  morning  wandering  medi- 
tatively over  the  cloudy  fells.  After  all  he  was  only  where  he 
was,  before  the  blessed  madness,  the  upflooding  hope,  nay, 
almost  certainty,  of  yesterday.  His  attack  had  been  for  the 
moment  repulsed.  He  gathered  from  Rose's  manner  that  Cath- 
erine's action  with  regard  to  the  picnic  had  not  been  unmeaning 
nor  accidental,  as  on  second  thoughts  he  had  been  half-trying 
to  persuade  himself.  Evidently  those  about  her  felt  it  to  be 
ominous.  Well,  then,  at  worst,  when  they  met  they  would 
meet  on  a  different  footing,  with  a  sense  of  something  critical 
between  them.  Oh,  if  he  did  but  know  a  little  more  clearly 
how  he  stood  !  He  spent  a  noonday  hour  on  a  gray  rock  on 
the  side  of  the  fell  between  Whindale  and  Marrisdale,  studying 
the  path  opposite,  the  stepping-stones,  the  bit  of  white  road. 
The  minutes  passed  in  a  kind  of  trance  of  memory.  Oh,  that 
soft  child -like  movement  to  him,  after  his  speech  about  her 
father  !  that  heavenly  yielding  and  self-forgetfulness  which 
shone  in  her  every  look  and  movement  as  she  stood  balancing 
on  the  stepping-stones  !  If  after  all  she  should  prove  cruel  to 
him,  would  he  not  have  a  legitimate  grievance,  a  heavy  charge 
to  fling  against  her  maiden  gentleness  ?  He  trampled  on  the 
notion.  Let  her  do  with  him  as  she  would,  she  would  be  his 
saint  always,  unquestioned,  unarraigned. 

But  with  such  a  memory  in  his  mind  it  was  impossible  that 
any  man,  least  of  all  a  man  of  Elsmere's  temperament,  could  be 
very  hopeless.  Oh  yes,  he  had  been  rash,  foolhardy.  Do  such 
divine  creatures  stoop  to  mortal  men  as  easily  as  he  had  dreamt  ? 
He  recognises  all  the  difficulties,  he  enters  into  the  force  of  all 
the  ties  that  bind  her — or  imagines  that  he  does.  But  he  is  a 
man  and  her  lover ;  and  if  she  loves  him,  in  the  end  love  will 
conquer — must  conquer.  For  his  more  modern  sense,  deeply 


CHAP,  via  WESTMORELAND  111 

Christianised  as  it  is,  assumes  almost  without  argument  the 
sacredness  of  passion  and  its  claim — wherein  a  vast  difference 
between  himself  and  that  solitary  wrestler  in  Marrisdale. 

Meanwhile  he  kept  all  his  hopes  and  fears  to  himself.  Mrs. 
Thornburgh  was  dying  to  talk  to  him  ;  but  though  his  mobile, 
boyish  temperament  made  it  impossible  for  him  to  disguise  his 
change  of  mood,  there  was  in  him  a  certain  natural  dignity 
which  life  greatly  developed,  but  which  made  it  always  possible 
for  him  to  hold  his  own  against  curiosity  and  indiscretion.  Mrs. 
Thornburgh  had  to  hold  her  peace.  As  for  the  vicar,  he  de- 
veloped what  were  for  him  a  surprising  number  of  new  topics  of 
conversation,  and  in  the  late  afternoon  took  Elsmere  a  run  up 
the  fells  to  the  nearest  fragment  of  the  Eoman  road  which  runs, 
with  such  magnificent  disregard  of  the  humours  of  Mother 
Earth,  over  the  very  top  of  High  Street  towards  Penrith  and 
Carlisle. 

Next  day  it  looked  as  though  after  many  waverings  the  char- 
acteristic Westmoreland  weather  had  descended  upon  them  in 
good  earnest.  From  early  morn  till  late  evening  the  valley  was 
wrapped  in  damp  clouds  or  moving  rain,  which  swept  down 
from  the  west  through  the  great  basin  of  the  hills,  and  rolled 
along  the  course  of  the  river,  wrapping  trees  and  fells  and 
houses  in  the  same  misty  cheerless  drizzle.  Under  the  outward 
pall  of  rain,  indeed,  the  valley  was  renewing  its  summer  youth ; 
the  river  was  swelling  with  an  impetuous  music  through  all  its 
dwindled  channels  ;  the  crags  flung  out  white  waterfalls  again, 
which  the  heat  had  almost  dried  away  ;  and  by  noon  the  whole 
green  hollow  was  vocal  with  the  sounds  of  water — water  flashing 
and  foaming  in  the  river,  water  leaping  downwards  from  the 
rocks,  water  dripping  steadily  from  the  larches  and  sycamores 
and  the  slate-eaves  01  the  houses. 

Elsmere  sat  indoors  reading  up  the  history  of  the  parish 
system  of  Surrey,  or  pretending  to  do  so.  He  sat  in  a  corner 
of  the  study,  where  he  and  the  vicar  protected  each  other 
against  Mrs.  Thornburgh.  That  good  woman  would  open  the 
door  once  and  again  in  the  morning,  and  put  her  head  through 
in  search  of  prey ;  but  on  being  confronted  with  two  studious 
men  instead  of  one,  each  buried  up  to  the  ears  in  folios,  she 
would  give  vent  to  an  irritable  cough  and  retire  discomfited. 
In  reality  Elsmere  was  thinking  of  nothing  in  the  world  but 
what  Catherine  Ley  burn  might  be  doing  that  morning.  Judg- 
ing a  North  countrywoman  by  the  pusillanimous  Southern 
standard,  he  found  himself  glorying  in  the  weather.  She  could 
not  wander  far  from  him  to-day. 

After  the  early  dinner  he  escaped,  just  as  the  vicar's  wife 
was  devising  an  excuse  on  which  to  convey  both  him  and  her- 
self to  Burwood,  and  sallied  forth  with  a  mackintosh  for  a  rush 
down  the  Whinborough  road.  It  was  still  raining,  but  the 
clouds  showed  a  momentary  lightening,  and  a  few  gleams  of 
watery  sunshine  brought  out  every  now  and  then  that  sparkle 


112  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

on  the  trees,  that  iridescent  beauty  of  distance  and  atmosphere 
which  goes  so  far  to  make  a  sensitive  spectator  forget  the  petu- 
lant abundance  of  mountain  rain.  Elsmere  passed  Burwood 
with  a  thrill.  Should  he  or  should  he  not  present  himself  1 
Let  him  push  on  a  bit  and  think.  So  on  he  swung,  measuring 
his  tall  frame  against  the  gusts,  spirits  and  masculine  energy 
rising  higher  with  every  step.  At  last  the  passion  of  his  mood 
had  wrestled  itself  out  with  the  weather,  and  he  turned  back 
once  more  determined  to  seek  and  find  her,  to  face  his  fortunes 
like  a  man.  The  warm  rain  beating  from  the  west  struck  on 
his  uplifted  face.  He  welcomed  it  as  a  friend.  Rain  and  storm 
had  opened  to  him  the  gates  of  a  spiritual  citadel.  What  could 
ever  wholly  close  it  against  him  any  more  ?  He  felt  so  strong, 
so  confident !  Patience  and  courage  ! 

Before  him  the  great  hollow  of  High  Fell  was  just  coming 
out  from  the  white  mists  surging  round  it.  A  shaft  of  sunlight 
lay  across  its  upper  end,  and  he  caught  a  marvellous  apparition 
of  a  sunlit  valley  hung  in  air,  a  pale  strip  of  blue  above  it,  a 
white  thread  of  stream  wavering  through  it,  and  all  around  it 
and  below  it  the  rolling  rain-clouds. 

Suddenly  between  him  and  that  enchanter's  vision  he  saw  a 
dark  slim  figure  against  the  mists,  walking  before  him  along 
the  road.  It  was  Catherine — Catherine  just  emerged  from  a 
footpath  across  the  fields,  battling  with  wind  and  rain,  and 
quite  unconscious  of  any  spectator.  Oh,  what  a  sudden  thrill 
was  that !  what  a  leaping  together  of  joy  and  dread,  which  sent 
the  blood  to  his  heart !  Alone — they  two  alone  again — in  the 
wild  Westmoreland  mists,  and  half  a  mile  at  least  of  winding 
road  between  them  and  Burwood.  He  flew  after  her,  dreading, 
and  yet  longing  for  the  moment  when  he  should  meet  her  eyes. 
Fortune  had  suddenly  given  this  hour  into  his  hands  ;  he  felt  it 
open  upon  him  like  that  mystic  valley  in  the  clouds. 

Catherine  heard  the  hurrying  steps  behind  her  and  turned. 
There  was  an  evident  start  when  she  caught  sight  of  her  pur- 
suer— a  quick  change  of  expression.  She  wore  a  close-fitting 
waterproof  dress  and  cap.  Her  hair  was  lightly  loosened,  her 
cheek  freshened  by  the  storm.  He  came  up  with  her  ;  he  took 
her  hand,  his  eyes  dancing  with  the  joy  he  could  not  hide. 

'  What  are  you  made  of,  I  wonder  ! '  he  said  gaily.  '  Nothing, 
certainly,  that  minds  weather.' 

'  No  Westmoreland  native  thinks  of  staying  at  home  for  this,' 
she  said  with  her  quiet  smile,  moving  on  beside  him  as  she 
spoke. 

He  looked  down  upon  her  with  an  indescribable  mixture  of 
feelings.  No  stiffness,  no  coldness  in  her  manner — only  the 
even  gentleness  which  always  marked  her  out  from  others.  He 
felt  as  though  yesterday  were  blotted  out,  and  would  not  for 
worlds  have  recalled  it  to  her  or  reproached  her  with  it.  Let  it 
be  as  though  they  were  but  carrying  on  the  scene  of  the  stepping- 
stones. 


CHAP,  vin  WESTMORELAND  113 

'  Look,'  he  said,  pointing  to  the  west ;  '  have  you  been  watch- 
ing that  magical  break  in  the  clouds  ? ' 

Her  eyes  followed  his  to  the  delicate  picture  hung  high 
among  the  moving  mists. 

'Ah,'  she  exclaimed,  her  face  kindling,  'that  is  one  of  our 
loveliest  effects,  and  one  of  the  rarest.  You  are  lucky  to  have 
seen  it.' 

'I  am  conceited  enough,'  he  said  joyously,  Ho  feel  as  if  some 
enchanter  were  at  work  up  there  drawing  pictures  on  the  mists 
for  my  special  benefit.  How  welcome  the  rain  is  !  As  I  am 
afraid  you  have  heard  me  say  before,  what  new  charm  it  gives 
to  your  valley  ! ' 

There  was  something  in  the  buoyancy  and  force  of  his 
mood  that  seemed  to  make  Catherine  shrink  into  herself.  She 
would  not  pursue  the  subject  of  Westmoreland.  She  asked 
with  a  little  stiffness  whether  he  had  good  news  from  Mrs. 
Elsmere. 

'  Oh,  yes.  As  usual,  she  is  doing  everything  for  me,'  he  said, 
smiling.  '  It  is  disgraceful  that  I  should  be  idling  here  while 
she  is  struggling  with  carpenters  and  paperers,  and  puzzling 
out  the  decorations  of  the  drawing-room.  She  writes  to  me  in 
a  fury  about  the  word  "  artistic."  She  declares  even  the  little 
upholsterer  at  Churton  hurls  it  at  her  every  other  minute,  and 
that  if  it  weren't  for  me  she  would  select  everything  as  frankly, 
primevally  hideous  as  she  could  find,  just  to  spite  him.  As  it  is, 
he  has  so  warped  her  judgment  that  she  has  left  the  sitting-room 
papers  till  I  arrive.  For  the  drawing-room  she  avows  a  passion- 
ate preference  for  one  all  cabbage-roses  and  no  stalks  ;  but  she 
admits  that  it  may  be  exasperation.  She  wants  your  sister, 
clearly,  to  advise  her.  By  the  way,'  and  his  voice  changed,  '  the 
vicar  told  me  last  night  that  Miss  Rose  is  going  to-  Manchester 
for  the  winter  to  study.  He  heard  it  from  Miss  Agnes,  I  think. 
The  news  interested  me  greatly  after  our  conversation.' 

He  looked  at  her  with  the  most  winning  interrogative  eyes. 
His  whole  manner  implied  that  everything  which  touched  and 
concerned  her  touched  and  concerned  him  ;  and,  moreover,  that 
she  had  given  him  in  some  sort  a  right  to  share  her  thoughts 
and  difficulties.  Catherine  struggled  with  herself. 

'  I  trust  it  may  answer,'  she  said  in  a  low  voice. 

But  she  would  say  no  more,  and  he  felt  rebuffed.  His  buoy- 
ancy began  to  desert  him. 

'It  must  be  a  great  trial  to  Mrs.  Elsmere,'  she  said  presently 
with  an  effort,  once  more  steering  away  from  herself  and  her 
concerns,  '  this  going  back  to  her  old  home.' 

'  It  is.  My  father's  long  struggle  for  life  in  that  house  is  a 
very  painful  memory.  I  wished  her  to  put  it  off  till  I  could  go 
with  her,  but  she  declared  she  would  rather  get  over  the  first 
week  or  two  by  herself.  How  I  should  like  you  to  know  my 
mother,  Miss  Leyburn  ! ' 

At  this  she  could  not  help  meeting  his  glance  and  smile, 


114  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

and  answering  them,  though  with  a  kind  of  constraint  most 
unlike  her. 

'  I  hope  I  may  some  day  see  Mrs.  Elsmere,'  she  said. 

'  It  is  one  of  my  strongest  wishes,'  he  answered  hurriedly,  '  to 
bring  you  together.' 

The  words  were  simple  enough  ;  the  tone  was  full  of  emotion. 
He  was  fast  losing  control  of  himself.  She  felt  it  through 
every  nerve,  and  a  sort  of  wild  dread  seized  her  of  what  he 
might  say  next.  Oh,  she  must,  she  must  prevent  it ! 

'  Your  mother  was  with  you  most  of  your  Oxford  life,  was  she 
not  ? '  she  said,  forcing  herself  to  speak  in  her  most  everyday 
tones. 

He  controlled  himself  with  a  mighty  effort. 

'  Since  I  became  a  Fellow.  We  have  been  alone  in  the  world 
so  long.  We  have  never  been  able  to  do  without  each  other.' 

'Isn't  it  wonderful  to  you?'  said  Catherine,  after  a  little 
electric  pause — and  her  voice  was  steadier  and  clearer  than  it 
had  been  since  the  beginning  of  their  conversation — '  how  little 
the  majority  of  sons  and  daughters  regard  their  parents  when 
they  come  to  grow  up  and  want  to  live  their  own  lives  ?  The 
one  thought  seems  to  be  to  get  rid  of  them,  to  throw  off  their 
claims,  to  cut  them  adrift,  to  escape  them — decently,  of  course, 
and  under  many  pretexts,  but  still  to  escape  them.  All  the 
long  years  of  devotion  and  self-sacrifice  go  for  nothing.' 

He  looked  at  her  quickly — a  troubled,  questioning  look. 

'It  is  so,  often  •  but  not,  I  think,  where  the  parents  have 
truly  understood  their  problem.  The  real  difficulty  for  father 
and  mother  is  not  childhood,  but  youth  ;  how  to  get  over  that 
difficult  time  when  the  child  passes  into  the  man  or  woman,  and 
a  relation  of  governor  and  governed  should  become  the  purest 
and  closest  of  friendships.  You  and  I  have  been  lucky.' 

'  Yes,'  she  said,  looking  straight  before  her,  and  still  speaking 
with  a  distinctness  which  caught  his  ear  painfully,  '  and  so  are 
the  greater  debtors  !  There  is  no  excuse,  I  think,  for  any  child, 
least  of  all  for  the  child  who  has  had  years  of  understanding 
love  to  look  back  upon,  if  it  puts  its  own  claim  first ;  if  it  insists 
on  satisfying  itself,  when  there  is  age  and  weakness  appealing 
to  it  on  the  other  side,  when  it  is  still  urgently  needed  to  help 
those  older,  to  shield  those  younger,  than  itself.  Its  business 
first  of  all  is  to  pay  its  debt,  whatever  the  cost.' 

The  voice  was  low,  but  it  had  the  clear  vibrating  ring  of 
steel.  Robert's  face  had  darkened  visibly. 

'But,  surely,'  he  cried,  goaded  by  a  new  stinging  sense  of 
revolt  and  pain — '  surely  the  child  may  make  a  fatal  mistake  if 
it  imagines  that  its  own  happiness  counts  for  nothing  in  the 
parents'  eyes.  What  parent  but  must  suffer  from  the  starving 
of  the  child's  nature  ?  What  have  mother  and  father  been  work- 
ing for,  after  all,  but  the  perfecting  of  the  child's  life  ?  Their 
longing  is  that  it  should  fulfil  itself  in  all  directions.  New  ties, 
new  affections,  on  the  child's  part,  mean  the  enriching  of  the 


CHAP,  vnr  WESTMORELAND  115 

parent.  What  a  cruel  fate  for  the  elder  generation,  to  make  it 
the  jailer  and  burden  of  the  younger  !' 

He  spoke  with  heat  and  anger,  with  a  sense  of  dashing  him- 
self against  an  obstacle,  and  a  dumb  despairing  certainty 
rising  at  the  heart  of  him. 

'  Ah,  that  is  what  we  are  so  ready  to  say,'  she  answered,  her 
breath  coming  more  quickly,  and  her  eye  meeting  his  with  a 
kind  of  antagonism  in  it ;  '  but  it  is  all  sophistry.  The  only 
safety  lies  in  following  out  the  plain  duty.  The  parent  wants 
the  child's  help  and  care,  the  child  is  bound  to  give  it ;  that  is 
all  it  needs  to  know.  If  it  forms  new  ties,  it  belongs  to  them, 
not  to  the  old  ones ;  the  old  ones  must  come  to  be  forgotten 
and  put  aside.' 

'  So  you  would  make  all  life  a  sacrifice  to  the  past  ?'  he  cried, 
quivering  under  the  blow  she  was  dealing  him. 

'  No,  not  all  life,'  she  said,  struggling  hard  to  preserve  her 
perfect  calm  of  manner :  he  could  not  know  that  she  was 
trembling  from  head  to  foot.  '  There  are  many  for  whom  it  is 
easy  and  right  to  choose  their  own  way ;  their  happiness  robs 
no  one.  There  are  others  on  whom  a  charge  has  been  laid  from 
their  childhood,  a  charge  perhaps ' — and  her  voice  faltered  at 
last — 'impressed  on  them  by  dying  lips,  which  must  govern, 
possess  their  lives ;  which  it  would  be  baseness,  treason,  to 
betray.  We  are  not  here  only  to  be  happy.' 

And  she  turned  to  him  deadly  pale,  the  faintest,  sweetest 
smile  on  her  lip.  He  was  for  the  moment  incapable  of  speech. 
He  began  phrase  after  phrase,  and  broke  them  off.  A  whirl- 
wind of  feeling  possessed  him.  The  strangeness,  the  unworldli- 
ness  of  what  she  had  done  struck  him  singularly.  He  realised 
through  every  nerve  that  what  she  had  just  said  to  him  she  had 
been  bracing  herself  to  say  to  him  ever  since  their  last  parting. 
And  now  he  could  not  tell,  or  rather,  blindly  could  not  see, 
whether  she  suffered  in  the  saying  it.  A  passionate  protest 
rose  in  him,  not  so  much  against  her  words  as  against  her  self- 
control.  The  man  in  him  rose  up  against  the  woman's  un- 
looked-for, unwelcome  strength. 

But  as  the  hot  words  she  had  dared  so  much  in  her  simplicity 
to  avert  from  them  both  were  bursting  from  him,  they  were 
checked  by  a  sudden  physical  difficulty.  A  bit  of  road  was 
under  water.  A  little  beck,  swollen  by  the  rain,  had  overflowed, 
and  for  a  few  yards'  distance  the  water  stood  about  eight  inches 
deep  from  hedge  to  hedge.  Eobert  had  splashed  through  the 
flood  half  an  hour  before,  but  it  had  risen  rapidly  since  then. 
He  had  to  apply  his  mind  to  the  practical  task  of  finding  a  way 
to  the  other  side. 

'  You  must  climb  the  bank,'  he  said,  '  and  get  through  into 
the  field.' 

She  assented  mutely.  He  went  first,  drew  her  up  the  bank, 
forced  his  way  through  the  loosely  growing  hedge  himself,  and 
holding  back  some  young  hazel  saplings  and  breaking  others, 


116  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

made  an  opening  for  her  through  which  she  scrambled  with  bent 
head  ;  then,  stretching  out  his  hand  to  her,  he  made  her  submit 
to  be  helped  down  the  steep  bank  on  the  other  side.  Her 
straight  young  figure  was  just  above  him,  her  breath  almost  on 
his  cheek. 

'You  talk  of  baseness  and  treason,'  he  began  passionately, 
conscious  of  a  hundred  wild  impulses,  as  perforce  she  leant  her 
light  weight  upon  his  arm.  'Life  is  not  so  simple.  It  is  so 
easy  to  sacrifice  others  with  one's  self,  to  slay  all  claims  in  honour 
of  one,  instead  of  knitting  the  new  ones  to  the  old.  Is  life  to 
be  allowed  no  natural  expansion  1  Have  you  forgotten  that,  in 
refusing  the  new  bond  for  the  old  bond's  sake,  the  child  may  be 
simply  wronging  the  parents,  depriving  them  of  another  affec- 
tion, another  support,  which  ought  to  have  been  theirs  ?' 

His  tone  was  harsh,  almost  violent.  It  seemed  to  him  that 
she  grew  suddenly  white,  and  he  grasped  her  more  firmly  still. 
She  reached  the  level  of  the  field,  quickly  withdrew  her  hand, 
and  for  a  moment  their  eyes  met,  her  pale  face  raised  to  his.  It 
seemed  an  age,  so  much  was  said  in  that  look.  There  was 
appeal  on  her  side,  passion  on  his.  Plainly  she  implored  him  to 
say  no  more,  to  spare  her  and  himself. 

'  In  some  cases,'  she  said,  and  her  voice  sounded  strained  and 
hoarse  to  both  of  them,  '  one  cannot  risk  the  old  bond.  One 
dare  not  trust  one's  self — or  circumstance.  The  responsibility  is 
too  great ;  one  can  but  follow  the  beaten  path,  cling  to  the  one 
thread.  But  don't  let  us  talk  of  it  any  more.  We  must  make 
for  that  gate,  Mr.  Elsmere.  It  will  bring  us  out  on  the  road 
again  close  by  home.' 

He  was  quelled.  Speech  suddenly  became  impossible  to  him. 
He  was  struck  again  with  that  sense  of  a  will  firmer  and  more 
tenacious  than  his  own,  which  had  visited  him  in  a  slight 
passing  way  on  the  first  evening  they  ever  met,  and  now  filled 
him  with  a  kind  of  despair.  As  they  pushed  silently  along  the 
edge  of  the  dripping  meadow,  he  noticed  with  a  pang  that  the 
stepping-stones  lay  just  below  them.  The  gleam  of  sun  had 
died  away,  the  aerial  valley  in  the  clouds  had  vanished,  and  a 
fresh  storm  of  rain  brought  back  the  colour  to  Catherine's 
cheek.  On  their  left  hand  was  the  roaring  of  the  river,  on  their 
right  they  could  already  hear  the  wind  moaning  and  tearing 
through  the  trees  which  sheltered  Burwood.  The  nature  which 
an  hour  ago  had  seemed  to  him  so  full  of  stimulus  and  exhilara- 
tion had  taken  to  itself  a  note  of  gloom  and  mourning ;  for  he 
was  at  the  age  when  Nature  is  the  mere  docile  responsive  mirror 
of  the  spirit,  when  all  her  forces  and  powers  are  made  for  us, 
and  are  only  there  to  play  chorus  to  our  story. 

They  reached  the  little  lane  leading  to  the  gate  of  Burwood. 
She  paused  at  the  foot  of  it. 

'You  will  come  in  and  see  my  mother,  Mr.  Elsmere?' 

Her  look  expressed  a  yearning  she  could  not  crush.  '  Your 
pardon,  your  friendship,'  it  cried,  with  the  usual  futility  of  all 


CHAP,  viii  WESTMORELAND  117 

good  women  under  the  circumstances.  But  as  he  met  it  for  one 
passionate  instant,  he  recognised  fully  that  there  was  not  a 
trace  of  yielding  in  it.  At  the  bottom  of  the  softness  there  was 
the  iron  of  resolution. 

'  No,  no ;  not  now,'  he  said  involuntarily ;  and  she  never  for- 
got the  painful  struggle  of  the  face ;  '  good-bye.'  He  touched 
her  hand  without  another  word,  and  was  gone. 

She  toiled  up  to  the  gate  with  difficulty,  the  gray  rain- 
washed  road,  the  wall,  the  trees,  swimming  before  her  eyes. 

In  the  hall  she  came  across  Agnes,  who  caught  hold  of  her 
with  a  start. 

'  My  dear  Cathie  !  you  have  been  walking  yourself  to  death. 
You  look  like  a  ghost.  Come  and  have  some  tea  at  once.' 

And  she  dragged  her  into  the  drawing-room.  Catherine 
submitted  with  all  her  usual  outward  calm,  faintly  smiling  at 
her  sister's  onslaught.  But  she  would  not  let  Agnes  put  her 
down  on  the  sofa.  She  stood  with  her  hand  on  the  back  of  a 
chair. 

'  The  weather  is  very  close  and  exhausting,'  she  said,  gently 
lifting  her  hand  to  her  hat.  But  the'  hand  dropped,  and  she 
sank  heavily  into  the  chair. 

'  Cathie,  you  are  faint,'  cried  Agnes,  running  to  her. 

Catherine  waved  her  away,  and,  with  an  effort  of  which  none 
but  she  would  have  been  capable,  mastered  the  physical  weak- 
ness. 

'  I  have  been  a  long  way,  dear,'  she  said,  as  though  in  apology, 
'  and  there  is  no  air.  Yes,  I  will  go  upstairs  and  lie  down  a 
minute  or  two.  Oh  no,  don't  come,  I  will  be  down  for  tea 
directly.' 

And  refusing  all  help,  she  guided  herself  out  of  the  room, 
her  face  the  colour  of  the  foam  on  the  beck  outside.  Agnes 
stood  dumfoundered.  Never  in  her  life  before  had  she  seen 
Catherine  betray  any  such  signs  of  physical  exhaustion. 

Suddenly  Rose  ran  in,  shut  the  door  carefully  behind  her, 
and  rushing  up  to  Agnes  put  her  hands  on  her  shoulders. 

'  He  has  proposed  to  her,  and  she  has  said  no  ! ' 

'  He  ?    What,  Mr.  Elsmere  ?    How  on  earth  can  you  know  ? ' 

'  I  saw  them  from  upstairs  come  to  the  bottom  of  the  lane. 
Then  he  rushed  on,  and  I  have  just  met  her  on  the  stairs.  It's 
as  plain  as  the  nose  on  your  face.' 

Agnes  sat  down  bewildered. 

'  It  is  hard  on  him,'  she  said  at  last. 

'  Yes,  it  is  very  hard  on  him  ! '  cried  Rose,  pacing  the  room, 
her  long  thin  arms  clasped  behind  her,  her  eyes  flashing,  '  for 
she  loves  him  ! ' 

'Rose!' 

'  She  does,  my  dear,  she  does,'  cried  the  girl,  frowning.  '  I 
know  it  in  a  hundred  ways.' 

Agnes  ruminated. 

'  And  it's  all  because  of  us  ? '  she  said  at  last  reflectively. 


118  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

'  Of  course  !  I  put  it  to  you,  Agnes ' — and  Rose  stood  still 
with  a  tragic  air — '  I  put  it  to  you,  whether  it  isn't  too  bad  that 
three  unoffending  women  should  have  such  a  r61e  as  this  as- 
signed them  against  their  will ! ' 

The  eloquence  of  eighteen  was  irresistible.  Agnes  buried  her 
head  in  the  sofa  cushion,  and  shook  with  a  kind  of  helpless 
laughter.  Rose  meanwhile  stood  in  the  window,  her  thin  form 
drawn  up  to  its  full  height,  angry  with  Agnes,  and  enraged 
with  all  the  world. 

'  It's  absurd,  it's  insulting,'  she  exclaimed.  '  I  should  imagine 
that  you  and  I,  Agnes,  were  old  enough  and  sane  enough  to 
look  after  mamma,  put  out  the  stores,  say  our  prayers,  and 
prevent  each  other  from  running  away  with  adventurers  !  I 
won't  be  always  in  leading-strings.  I  won't  acknowledge  that 
Catherine  is  bound  to  be  an  old  maid  to  keep  me  in  order.  I 
hate  it !  It  is  sacrifice  run  mad.' 

And  Rose  turned  to  her  sister,  the  defiant  head  thrown  back, 
a  passion  of  manifold  protest  in  the  girlish  looks. 

'It  is  very  easy,  my  dear,  to  be  judge  in  one's  own  case,' 
replied  Agnes  calmly,  recovering  herself.  'Suppose  you  tell 
Catherine  some  of  these  home  truths  ? ' 

Rose  collapsed  at  once.  She  sat  down  despondently,  and 
fell,  head  drooping,  into  a  moody  silence.  Agnes  watched  her 
with  a  kind  of  triumph.  When  it  came  to  the  point,  she  knew 
perfectly  well  that  there  was  not  a  will  among  them  that  could 
measure  itself  with  any  chance  of  success  against  that  lofty 
but  unwavering  will  of  Catherine's.  Rose  was  violent,  and 
there  was  much  reason  in  her  violence.  But  as  for  her,  she  pre- 
ferred not  to  dash  her  head  against  stone  walls. 

'  Well,  then,  if  you  won't  say  them  to  Catherine,  say  them  to 
mamma,'  she  suggested  presently,  but  half  ironically. 

'  Mamma  is  no  good,'  cried  Rose  angrily  ;  '  why  do  you  bring 
her  in  ?  Catherine  would  talk  her  round  in  ten  minutes.' 

Long  after  every  one  else  in  Burwood,  even  the  chafing, 
excited  Rose,  was  asleep,  Catherine  in  her  dimly  lighted  room, 
where  the  stormy  north-west  wind  beat  noisily  against  her 
window,  was  sitting  in  a  low  chair,  her  head  leaning  against 
her  bed,  her  little  well-worn  Testament  open  on  her  knee.  But 
she  was  not  reading.  Her  eyes  were  shut ;  one  hand  hung 
down  beside  her,  and  tears  were  raining  fast  and  silently  over 
her  cheeks.  It  was  the  stillest,  most  restrained  weeping.  She 
hardly  knew  why  she  wept,  she  only  knew  that  there  was  some- 
thing within  her  which  must  have  its  way.  What  did  this 
inner  smart  and  tumult  mean,  this  rebellion  of  the  self  against 
the  will  which  had  never  yet  found  its  mastery  fail  it  ?  It  was 
as  though  from  her  childhood  till  now  she  had  lived  in  a  moral 
world  whereof  the  aims,  the  dangers,  the  joys,  were  all  she 
knew ;  and  now  the  walls  of  this  world  were  crumbling  round 
her,  and  strange  lights,  strange  voices,  strange  colours  were 
breaking  through.  All  the  sayings  of  Christ  which  had  lain 


CHAP,  ix  WESTMORELAND  119 

closest  to  her  heart  for  years,  to-night  for  the  first  time  seem  to 
her  no  longer  sayings  of  comfort  or  command,  but  sayings  of 
fire  and  flame  that  burn  their  coercing  way  through  life  and 
thought.  We  recite  so  glibly,  '  He  that  loseth  his  life  shall  save 
it ; '  and  when  we  come  to  any  of  the  common  crises  of  experi- 
ence which  are  the  source  and  the  sanction  of  the  words,  flesh 
and  blood  recoil.  This  girl  amid  her  mountains  had  carried 
religion  as  far  as  religion  can  be  carried  before  it  meets  life  in 
the  wrestle  appointed  it.  The  calm,  simple  outlines  of  things 
are  blurring  before  her  eyes  ;  the  great  placid  deeps  of  the  soul 
are  breaking  up. 

To  the  purest  ascetic  temper  a  struggle  of  this  kind  is  hardly 
real.  Catherine  felt  a  bitter  surprise  at  her  own  pain.  Yester- 
day a  sort  of  mystical  exaltation  upheld  her.  What  had  broken 
it  down  ? 

Simply  a  pair  of  reproachful  eves,  a  pale  protesting  face. 
What  trifles  compared  to  the  awful  necessities  of  an  infinite 
obedience !  And  yet  they  haunt  her,  till  her  heart  aches  for 
misery,  till  she  only  yearns  to  be  counselled,  to  be  forgiven,  to 
be  at  least  understood. 

'  Why,  why  am  I  so  weak  1 '  she  cried  in  utter  abasement  of 
soul,  and  knew  not  that  in  that  weakness,  or  rather  in  the  founts 
of  character  from  which  it  sprang,  lay  the  innermost  safeguard 
of  her  life. 


CHAPTER  IX 

ROBERT  was  very  nearly  reduced  to  despair  by  the  scene  with 
Catherine  we  have  described.  He  spent  a  brooding  and  miser- 
able hour  in  the  vicar's  study  afterwards,  making  up  his  mind 
as  to  what  he  should  do.  One  phrase  of  hers  which  had  passed 
almost  unnoticed  in  the  shock  of  the  moment  was  now  ringing 
in  his  ears,  maddening  him  by  a  sense  of  joy  just  within  his 
reach,  and  yet  barred  away  from  him  by  an  obstacle  as  strong 
as  it  was  intangible.  -'  We  are  not  here  only  to  be  happy,'  she 
had  said  to  him,  with  a  look  of  ethereal  exaltation  worthy  of 
her  namesake  of  Alexandria.  The  words  had  slipped  from  her 
involuntarily  in  the  spiritual  tension  of  her  mood.  They  were 
now  filling  Robert  Elsmere's  mind  with  a  tormenting,  torturing 
bliss.  What  could  they  mean?  What  had  her  paleness,  her 
evident  trouble  and  weakness  meant,  but  that  the  inmost  self 
of  hers  was  his,  was  conquered  :  and  that,  but  for  the  shadowy 
obstacle  between  them,  all  would  be  well  ? 

As  for  the  obstacle  in  itself,  he  did  not  admit  its  force  for  a 
moment.  No  sane  and  practical  man,  least  of  all  when  that 
man  happened  to  be  Catherine  Leyburn's  lover,  could  regard  it 
as  a  binding  obligation  upon  her  that  she  should  sacrifice  her 
own  life  and  happiness  to  three  persons,  who  were  in  no  evident 
moral  straits,  no  physical  or  pecuniary  need,  and  who,  as  Rose 


120  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

incoherently  put  it,  might  very  well  be  rather  braced  than  in- 
jured by  the  withdrawal  of  her  strong  support. 

But  the  obstacle  of  character — ah,  there  was  a  different 
matter !  He  realised  with  despair  the  brooding  scrupulous 
force  of  moral  passion  to  which  her  lonely  life,  her  antecedents, 
and  her  father's  nature  working  in  her  had  given  so  rare  and 
marked  a  development.  No  temper  in  the  world  is  so  little 
open  to  reason  as  the  ascetic  temper.  How  many  a  lover  and 
husband,  how  many  a  parent  and  friend,  have  realised  to  their 
pain,  since  history  began,  the  overwhelming  attraction  which 
all  the  processes  of  self-annihilation  have  for  a  certain  order  of 
minds  !  Robert's  heart  sank  before  the  memory  of  that  frail 
indomitable  look,  that  aspect  of  sad  yet  immovable  conviction 
with  which  she  had  bade  him  farewell.  And  yet,  surely — surely 
under  the  willingness  of  the  spirit  there  had  been  a  pitiful,  a 
most  womanly  weakness  of  the  flesh.  Surely,  now  memory  re- 
produced the  scene,  she  had  been  white — trembling :  her  hand 
had  rested  on  the  moss-grown  wall  beside  her  for  support.  Oh, 
why  had  he  been  so  timid  ?  why  had  he  let  that  awe  of  her, 
which  her  personality  produced  so  readily,  stand  between  them  ? 
why  had  he  not  boldly  caught  her  to  himself,  and,  with  all  the 
eloquence  of  a  passionate  nature,  trampled  on  her  scruples, 
marched  through  her  doubts,  convinced — reasoned  her  into  a 
blessed  submission  ? 

'And  I  will  do  it  yet !'  he  cried,  leaping  to  his  feet  with  a, 
sudden  access  of  hope  and  energy.  And  he  stood  awhile  look- 
ing out  into  the  rainy  evening,  all  the  keen  irregular  face  and 
thin  pliant  form  hardening  into  the  intensity  of  resolve,  which 
had  so  often  carried  the  young  tutor  through  an  Oxford  diffi- 
culty, breaking  down  antagonism  and  compelling  consent. 

At  the  high  tea  which  represented  the  late  dinner  of  the 
household  he  was  wary  and  self-possessed.  Mrs.  Thornburgh  got 
out  of  him  that  he  had  been  for  a  walk,  and  had  seen  Catherine, 
but  for  all  her  ingenuities  of  cross-examination  she  got  nothing 
more.  Afterwards,  when  he  and  the  vicar  were  smoking  to- 
gether, he  proposed  to  Mr.  Thornburgh  that  they  two  should  go 
off  for  a  couple  of  days  on  a  walking  tour  to  Ullswater. 

'I  want  to  go  away,'  he  said,  with  a  hand  on  the  vicar's 
shoulder,  '  and  I  want  to  come  back.'  The  deliberation  of  the 
last  words  was  not  to  be  mistaken.  The  vicar  emitted  a  con- 
tented puff,  looked  the  young  man  straight  in  the  eyes,  and 
without  another  word  began  to  plan  a  walk  to  Patterdale  via 
High  Street,  Martindale,  and  Howtown,  and  back  by  Hawes- 
water. 

To  Mrs.  Thornburgh  Robert  announced  that  he  must  leave 
them  on  the  following  Saturday,  June  24. 

'  You  have  given  me  a  good  time,  Cousin  Emma,'  he  said  to 
her,  with  a  bright  friendliness  which  dumfoundered  her.  A 
good  time,  indeed !  with  everything  begun  and  nothing  finished ; 
with  two  households  thrown  into  perturbation  for  a  delusion, 


CHAP,  ix  WESTMORELAND  121 

and  a  desirable  marriage  spoilt,  all  for  want  of  a  little  common 
sense  and  plain  speaking,  which  one  person  at  least  in  the 
valley  could  have  supplied  them  with,-  had  she  not  been  ignored 
and  browbeaten  on  all  sides.  She  contained  herself,  however, 
in  his  presence,  but  the  vicar  suffered  proportionately  in  the 
privacy  of  the  connubial  chamber.  He  had  never  seen  his  wife 
so  exasperated.  To  think  what  might  have  been,  what  she 
might  have  done  for  the  race,  but  for  the  whims  of  two  stuck- 
up,  superior,  impracticable  young  persons,  that  would  neither 
manage  their  own  affairs  nor  allow  other  people  to  manage 
them  for  them  !  The  vicar  behaved  gallantly,  kept  the  secret 
of  Elsmere's  remark  to  himself  like  a  man,  and  allowed  himself 
certain  counsels  against  matrimonial  meddling  which  plunged 
Mrs.  Thornburgh  into  well-simulated  slumber.  However,  in  the 
morning  he  was  vaguely  conscious  that  some  time  in  the  visions 
of  the  night  his  spouse  had  demanded  of  him  peremptorily, 
'  When  do  you  get  back,  William  1 '  To  the  best  of  his  memory 
the  vicar  had  sleepily  murmured,  '  Thursday ' ;  and  had  then 
heard,  echoed  through  his  dreams,  a  calculating  whisper,  'He 
goes  Saturday — one  clear  day  ! ' 

The  following  morning  was  gloomy  but  fine,  and  after  break- 
fast the  vicar  and  Elsmere  started  off.  Robert  turned  back  at 
the  top  of  the  High  Fell  pass  and  stood  leaning  on  his  alpen- 
stock, sending  a  passionate  farewell  to  the  gray  distant  house, 
the  upper  window,  the  copper  beech  in  the  garden,  the  bit  of 
winding  road,  while  the  vicar  discreetly  stepped  on  northward, 
his  eyes  fixed  on  the  wild  regions  of  Martindale. 

Mrs.  Thornburgh,  left  alone,  absorbed  herself  to  all  appear- 
ance in  the  school  treat  which  was  to  come  off  in  a  fortnight,  in 
a  new  set  of  covers  for  the  drawing-room,  and  in  Sarah's  love 
affairs,  which  were  always  passing  through  some  tragic  phase 
or  other,  and  into  which  Mrs.  Thornburgh  was  allowed  a  more 
unencumbered  view  than  she  was  into  Catherine  Leyburn's. 
Hose  and  Agnes  dropped  in  now  and  then,  and  found  her  not 
at  all  disposed  to  talk  to  them  on  the  great  event  of  the  day — 
Elsmere's  absence  and  approaching  departure.  They  cautiously 
communicated  to  her  their  own  suspicions  as  to  the  incident  of 
the  preceding  afternoon ;  and  Rose  gave  vent  to  one  fiery  on- 
slaught on  the  'moral  obstacle'  theory,  during  which  Mrs. 
Thornburgh  sat  studying  her  with  small  attentive  eyes  and 
curls  slowly  waving  from  side  to  side.  But  for  once  in  her  life 
the  vicar's  wife  was  not  communicative  in  return.  That  the 
situation  should  have  driven  even  Mrs.  Thornburgh  to  finesse 
was  a  surprising  testimony  to  its  gravity.  What  between  her 
sudden  taciturnity  and  Catherine's  pale  silence,  the  girls'  sense 
of  expectancy  was  roused  to  its  highest  pitch. 

'  They  come  back  to-morrow  night,'  said  Rose  thoughtfully, 
'and  he  goes  Saturday — 10.20  from  Whinborough — one  day  for 
the  Fifth  Act !  By  the  way,  why  did  Mrs.  Thornburgh  ask  us 
to  say  nothing  about  Saturday  at  home  ?' 


122  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

She  Jiad  asked  them,  however ;  and  with  a  pleasing  sense  of 
conspiracy  they  complied. 

It  was  late  on  Thursday  afternoon  when  Mrs.  Thornburgh, 
finding  the  Burwood  front  door  open,  made  her  unchallenged 
way  into  the  hall,  and  after  an  unanswered  knock  at  the  draw- 
ing-room door,  opened  it  and  peered  in  to  see  who  might  be 
there. 

'  May  I  come  in  ? ' 

Mrs.  Leyburn,  who  was  a  trifle  deaf,  was  sitting  by  the 
window  absorbed  in  the  intricacies  of  a  heel  which  seemed  to 
her  more  than  she  could  manage.  Her  card  was  mislaid,  the 
girls  were  none  of  them  at  hand,  and  she  felt  as  helpless  as  she 
commonly  did  when  left  alone. 

'  Oh,  do  come  in,  please !  So  glad  to  see  you.  Have  you  been 
nearly  blown  away  f ' 

For,  though  the  rain  had  stopped,  a  boisterous  north-west 
wind  was  still  rushing  through  the  valley,  and  the  trees  round 
Burwood  were  swaying  and  groaning  under  the  force  of  its 
onslaught. 

'"Wel^  it  is  stormy,'  said  Mrs.  Thornburgh,  stepping  in  and 
undoing  all  the  various  safety  pins  and  elastics  which  had  held 
her  dress  high  above  the  mud.  '  Are  the  girls  out  ? ' 

'  Yes,  Catherine  and  Agnes  are  at  the  school ;  and  Rose,  I 
think,  is  practising.' 

'  Ah,  well,'  said  Mrs.  Thornburgh,  settling  herself  in  a  chair 
close  by  her  friend,  '  I  wanted  to  find  you  alone.' 

Her  face,  framed  in  bushy  curls  and  an  old  garden  bonnet, 
was  flushed  and  serious.  Her  mittened  hands  were  clasped 
nervously  on  her  lap,  and  there  was  about  her  such  an  air  of 
forcibly  restrained  excitement  that  Mrs.  Leyburn's  mild  eyes 
gazed  at  her  with  some  astonishment.  The  two  women  were  a 
curious  contrast :  Mrs.  Thornburgh  short,  inclined,  as  we  know, 
to  be  stout,  ample  and  abounding  in  all  things,  whether  it  were 
curls  or  cap-strings  or  conversation ;  Mrs.  Leyburn  tall  and 
well  proportioned,  well  dressed,  with  the  same  graceful  ways 
and  languid  pretty  manners  as  had  first  attracted  her  husband's 
attention  thirty  years  before.  She  was  fond  of  Mrs.  Thorn- 
burgh, but  there  was  something  in  the  ebullient  energies  of  the 
vicar's  wife  which  always  gave  her  a  sense  of  bustle  and 
fatigue. 

'  I  am  sure  you  will  be  sorry  to  hear,'  began  her  visitor,  '  that 
Mr.  Elsmere  is  going.' 

'  Going  1 '  said  Mrs.  Leyburn,  laying  down  her  knitting. 
'Why,  I  thought  he  was  going  to  stay  with  you  another  ten 
days  at  least.' 

'So  did  I — so  did  he,'  said  Mrs.  Thornburgh,  nodding,  and 
then  pausing  with  a  most  effective  air  of  sudden  gravity  and 
'  recollection.' 

'  Then  why — what's  the  matter  ? '  asked  Mrs.  Leyburn,  won- 
dering. 


CHAP,  ix  WESTMORELAND  123 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  did  not  answer  for  a  minute,  and  Mrs. 
Leyburn  began  to  feel  a  little  nervous,  her  visitor's  eyes  were 
fixed  upon  her  with  so  much  meaning.  Urged  by  a  sudden 
impulse  she  bent  forward ;  so  did  Mrs.  Thornburgh,  and  their 
two  elderly  heads  nearly  touched. 

'  The  young  man  is  in  love  ! '  said  the  vicar's  wife  in  a  stage 
whisper,  drawing  back  after  a  pause,  to  see  the  effect  of  her 
announcement. 

'  Oh  !  with  whom  ? '  asked  Mrs.  Leyburn,  her  look  brightening. 
She  liked  a  love  affair  as  much  as  ever. 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  furtively  looked  round  to  see  if  the  door  was 
shut  and  all  safe — she  felt  herself  a  criminal,  but  the  sense  of 
guilt  had  an  exhilarating  rather  than  a  depressing  effect  upon 
her. 

'Have  you  guessed  nothing?  have  the  girls  told  you  any- 
thing?' 

'  No  ! '  said  Mrs.  Leyburn,  her  eyes  opening  wider  and  wider. 
She  never  guessed  anything;  there  was  no  need,  with  three 
daughters  to  think  for  her,  and  give  her  the  benefit  of  their 
young  brains.  '  No,'  she  said  again.  '  I  can't  imagine  what  you 
mean.' 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  felt  a  rush  of  inward  contempt  for  so  much 
obtuseness. 

'  Well,  then,  he  is  in  love  with  Catherine  ! '  she  said  abruptly, 
laying  her  hand  on  Mrs.  Leyburn's  knee,  and  watching  the 
effect. 
,,    '  With  Catherine ! '  stammered  Mrs.  Leyburn ; '  with  Catherine  / ' 

The  idea  was  amazing  to  her.  She  took  up  her  knitting  with 
trembling  fingers,  and  went  on  with  it  mechanically  a  second  or 
two.  Then  laying  it  down — 'Are  you  quite  sure?  has  he  told 
you?' 

'  No,  but  one  has  eyes,'  said  Mrs.  Thornburgh  hastily.  '  Will- 
iam and  I  have  seen  it  from  the  very  first  day.  And  we  are 
both  certain  that  on  Tuesday  she  made  him  understand  in  some 
way  or  other  that  she  wouldn't  marry  him,  and  that  is  why  he 
went  off  to  Ullswater,  and  why  he  made  up  his  mind  to  go  south 
before  his  time  is  up.' 

'  Tuesday  ? '  cried  Mrs.  Leyburn.  '  In  that  walk,  do  you  mean, 
when  Catherine  looked  so  tired  afterwards  ?  You  think  he  pro- 
posed in  that  walk  ? ' 

She  was  in  a  maze  of  bewilderment  and  excitement. 

'  Something  like  it — but  if  he  did,  she  said  "  No  " ;  and  what  I 
want  to  know  is  why  she  said  "  No." ' 

'  Why,  of  course,  because  she  didn't  care  for  him  ! '  exclaimed 
Mrs.  Leyburn,  opening  her  blue  eyes  wider  and  wider.  '  Cath- 
erine's not  like  most  girls ;  she  would  always  know  what  she 
felt,  and  would  never  keep  a  man  in  suspense.' 

'  Well,  I  don't  somehow  believe,'  said  Mrs.  Thornburgh  boldly, 
'that  she  doesn't  care  for  him.  He  is  just  the  young  man 
Catherine  might  care  for.  You  can  see  that  yourself.' 


124  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

Mrs.  Leyburn  once  more  laid  down  her  knitting  and  stared 
at  her  visitor.  Mrs.  Thornburgh,  after  all  her  meditations,  had 
no  very  precise  idea  as  to  why  she  was  at  that  moment  in  the  Bur- 
wood  drawing-room  bombarding  Mrs.  Leyburn  in  this  fashion. 
All  she  knew  was  that  she  had  sallied  forth  determined  somehow 
to  upset  the  situation,  just  as  one  gives  a  shake  purposely  to  a 
bundle  of  spillikins  on  the  chance  of  more  favourable  openings. 
Mrs.  Leyburn's  mind  was  just  now  playing  the  part  of  spillikins, 
and  the  vicar's  wife  was  shaking  it  vigorously,  though  with 
occasional  qualms  as  to  the  lawfulness  of  the  process. 

'  You  think  Catherine  does  care  for  him  ? '  resumed  Mrs.  Ley- 
burn  tremulously. 

'  Well,  isn't  he  just  the  kind  of  man  one  would  suppose  Cath- 
erine would  like  ? '  repeated  Mrs.  Thornburgh  persuasively  ;  '  he 
is  a  clergyman,  and  she  likes  serious  people ;  and  he's  sensible 
and  nice  and  well-mannered.  And  then  he  can  talk  about  books, 
just  like  her  father  used — I'm  sure  William  thinks  he  knows 
everything  !  He  isn't  as  nice-looking  as  he  might  be  just  now, 
but  then  that's  his  hair  and  his  fever,  poor  man.  And  then  he 
isn't  hanging  about.  He's  got  a  living,  and  there'd  be  the  poor 
people  all  ready,  and  everything  else  Catherine  likes.  And 
now  I'll  just  ask  you — did  you  ever  see  Catherine  more — more — 
lively — well,  I  know  that's  not  just  the  word,  but  you  know 
what  I  mean — than  she  has  been  the  last  fortnight  ? ' 

But  Mrs.  Leyburn  only  shook  her  head  helplessly.  She  did 
not  know  in  the  least  what  Mrs.  Thornburgh  meant.  She  never 
thought  Catherine  doleful,  and  she  agreed  that  certainly  '  lively ' 
was  not  the  word. 

'  Girls  get  so  frightfully  particular  nowadays,'  continued  the 
vicar's  wife,  with  reflective  candour.  '  Why,  when  William  fell 
in  love  with  me,  I  just  fell  in  love  with  him — at  once — because 
he  did.  And  if  it  hadn't  been  William,  but  somebody  else,  it 
would  have  been  the  same.  I  don't  believe  girls  have  got  hearts 
like  pebbles — if  the  man's  nice,  of  course  ! ' 

Mrs.  Leyburn  listened  to  this  summary  of  matrimonial  philo- 
sophy with  the  same  yielding  flurried  attention  as  she  was 
always  disposed  to  give  to  the  last  speaker. 

'  But,'  she  said,  still  in  a  maze,  '  if  she  did  care  for  him,  why 
should  she  send  him  away  ? ' 

'  Because  she  won't  have  him ! '  said  Mrs.  Thornburgh  ener- 
getically, leaning  over  the  arm  of  her  chair  that  she  might  bring 
herself  nearer  to  her  companion. 

The  fatuity  of  the  answer  left  Mrs.  Leyburn  staring. 

'  Because  she  won't  have  him,  my  dear  Mrs.  Leyburn  !  And 
— and — I'm  sure  nothing  would  make  me  interfere  like  this  if  I 
weren't  so  fond  of  you  all,  and  if  William  and  I  didn't  know  for 
certain  that  there  never  was  a  better  young  man  born  !  And 
then  I  was  just  sure  you'd  be  the  last  person  in  the  world,  if  you 
knew,  to  stand  in  young  people's  way  ! ' 

'//'cried  poor  Mrs.  Leyburn — 'I  stand  in  the  way!'    She 


CHAP,  ix  WESTMORELAND  125 

was  getting  tremulous  and  tearful,  and  Mrs.  Thornburgh  felt 
herself  a  brute. 

'  Well,'  she  said,  plunging  on  desperately, '  I  have  been  think- 
ing over  it  night  and  day.  I've  been  watching  him,  and  I've 
been  talking  to  the  girls,  and  I've  been  putting  two  and  two  to- 
gether, and  I'm  just  about  sure  that  there  might  be  a  chance  for 
Robert,  if  only  Catherine  didn't  feel  that  you  and  the  girls 
couldn't  get  on  without  her  ! ' 

Mrs.  Leyburn  took  up  her  knitting  again  with  agitated 
fingers.  She  was  so  long  in  answering  that  Mrs.  Thornburgh 
sat  and  thought  with  trepidation  of  all  sorts  of  unpleasant  con- 
sequences which  might  result  from  this  audacious  move  of  hers. 

'  I  don't  know  how  we  should  get  on,'  cried  Mrs.  Leyburn  at 
last,  with  a  sort  of  suppressed  sob,  while  something  very  like  a 
tear  fell  on  the  stocking  she  held. 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  was  still  more  frightened,  and  rushed  into 
a  flood  of  apologetic  speech.  Very  likely  she  was  wrong,  per- 
haps it  was  all  a  mistake,  she  was  afraid  she  had  done  harm,  and 
so  on.  Mrs.  Leyburn  took  very  little  heed,  but  at  last  she  said, 
looking  up  and  applying  a  soft  handkerchief  gently  to  her 
eyes — 

'  Is  his  mother  nice  ?  Where's  his  living  ?  Would  he  want  to 
be  married  soon  ? ' 

The  voice  was  weak  and  tearful,  but  there  was  in  it  unmis- 
takable eagerness  to  be  informed.  Mrs.  Thornburgh,  overjoyed, 
let  loose  upon  her  a  flood  of  particulars,  painted  the  virtues  and 
talents  of  Mrs.  Elsmere,  described  Robert's  Oxford  career,  with 
an  admirable  sense  for  effect,  and  a  truly  feminine  capacity  for 
murdering  every  university  detail,  drew  pictures  of  the  Mure- 
well  living  and  rectory,  of  which  Robert  had  photographs  with 
him,  threw  in  adroit  information  about  the  young  man's  private 
means,  and  in  general  showed  what  may  be  made  of  a  woman's 
mind  under  the  stimulus  of  one  of  the  occupations  most  proper 
to  it.  Mrs.  Leyburn  brightened  visibly  as  the  flood  proceeded. 
Alas,  poor  Catherine  !  How  little  room  there  is  for  the  heroic 
in  this  trivial  everyday  life  of  ours  ! 

Catherine  a  bride,  Catherine  a  wife  and  mother,  dim  visions 
of  a  white  soft  morsel  in  which  Catherine's  eyes  and  smile  should 
live  again — all  these  thoughts  went  trembling  and  flashing 
through  Mrs.  Leyburn's  mind  as  she  listened  to  Mrs.  Thornburgh. 
There  is  so  much  of  the  artist  in  the  maternal  mind,  of  the 
artist  who  longs  to  see  the  work  of  his  hand  in  fresh  combina- 
tions and  under  all  points  of  view.  Catherine,  in  the  heat  of 
her  own  self-surrender,  had  perhaps  forgotten  that  her  mother 
too  had  a  heart ! 

'Yes,  it  all  sounds  very  well,'  said  Mrs.  Leyburn  at  last, 
sighing,  '  but,  you  know,  Catherine  isn't  easy  to  manage.' 

'  Could  you  talk  to  her — find  out  a  little  ? ' 

'  Well,  not  to-day  ;  I  shall  hardly  see  her.  Doesn't  it  seem  to 
you  that  when  a  girl  takes  up  notions  like  Catherine's,  she 


126  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

hasn't  time  for  thinking  about  the  young  men  ?  Why,  she's  as 
full  of  business  all  day  long  as  an  egg's  full  of  meat.  Well,  it 
was  my  poor  Richard's  doing — it  was  his  doing,  bless  him  !  I  am 
not  going  to  say  anything  against  it.  But  it  was  different — 
once.' 

'  Yes,  I  know,'  said  Mrs.  Thornburgh  thoughtfully.  '  One  had 
plenty  of  time,  when  you  and  I  were  young,  to  sit  at  home  and 
think  what  one  was  going  to  wear,  and  how  one  would  look,  and 
whether  he  had  been  paying  attention  to  any  one  else ;  and  if 
he  had,  why;  and  all  that.  And  now  the  young  women  are  so 
superior.  But  the  marrying  has  got  to  be  done  somehow  all  the 
same.  What  is  she  doing  to-day  ? ' 

'  Oh,  she'll  be  busy  all  to-day  and  to-morrow  ;  I  hardly  expect 
to  see  her  till  Saturday.' 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  gave  a  start  of  dismay. 

'  Why,  what  is  the  matter  now  ? '  she  cried  in  her  most  ag- 
grieved tones.  'My  dear  Mrs.  Leyburn,  one  would  think  we 
had  the  cholera  in  the  parish.  Catherine  just  spoils  the  people.' 

'  Don't  you  remember,'  said  Mrs.  Leyburn,  staring  in  her  turn, 
and  drawing  herself  up  a  little,  '  that  to-morrow  is  Midsummer 
Day,  and  that  Mary  Backhouse  is  as  bad  as  she  can  be  ? ' 

'  Mary  Backhouse  !  Why,  I  had  forgotten  all  about  her  ! ' 
cried  the  vicar's  wife,  with  sudden  remorse.  And  she  sat  pen- 
sively eyeing  the  carpet  awhile. 

Then  she  got  what  particulars  she  could  out  of  Mrs.  Leyburn. 
Catherine,  it  appeared,  was  at  this  moment  at  High  Ghyll,  was 
not  to  return  till  late,  and  would  be  with  the  dying  girl  through 
the  greater  part  of  the  following  day,  returning  for  an  hour  or 
two's  rest  in  the  afternoon,  and  staying  in  the  evening  till  the 
twilight,  in  which  the  ghost  always  made  her  appearances, 
should  have  passed  into  night. 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  listened  to  it  all,  her  contriving  mind  work- 
ing the  while  at  railway  speed  on  the  facts  presented  to  her. 

'  How  do  you  get  her  home  to-morrow  nignt  ? '  she  asked,  with 
sudden  animation. 

'  Oh,  we  send  our  man  Richard  at  ten.  He  takes  a  lantern  if 
it's  dark.' 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  said  no  more.  Her  eyes  and  gestures  were 
all  alive  again  with  energy  and  hope.  She  had  given  her  shake 
to  Mrs.  Leyburn's  mind.  Much  good  might  it  do !  But,  after 
all,  she  had  the  poorest  opinion  of  the  widow's  capacities  as  an 
ally. 

She  and  her  companion  said  a  few  more  excited,  affectionate, 
and  apologetic  things  to  one  another,  and  then  she  departed. 

Both  mother  and  knitting  were  found  by  Agnes  half  an  hour 
later  in  a  state  of  considerable  confusion.  But  Mrs.  Leyburn 
kept  her  own  counsel,  having  resolved  for  once,  with  a  timid 
and  yet  delicious  excitement,  to  act  as  the  head  of  the  family. 

Meanwhile  Mrs.  Thornburgh  was  laying  plans  on  her  own 
account. 


CHAP,  ix  WESTMORELAND  127 

'  Ten  o'clock — moonlight,'  said  that  contriving  person  to  her- 
self going  home — 'at  least  if  the  clouds  hold  up — that'll  do — 
couldn't  be  better.' 

•  To  any  person  familiar  with  her  character  the  signs  of  some 
unusual  preoccupation  were  clear  enough  in  Mrs.  Leyburn  during 
this  Thursday  evening.  Catherine  noticed  them  at  once  when 
she  got  back  from  High  Ghyll  about  eight  o'clock,  and  wondered 
first  of  all  what  was  the  matter  ;  and  then,  with  more  emphasis, 
why  the  trouble  was  not  immediately  communicated  to  her.  It 
had  never  entered  into  her  head  to  take  her  mother  into  her  con- 
fidence with  regard  to  Elsmere.  Since  she  could  remember,  it 
had  been  an  axiom  in  the  family  to  spare  the  delicate  nervous 
mother  all  the  anxieties  and  perplexities  of  life.  It  was  a  system 
in  which  the  subject  of  it  had  always  acquiesced  with  perfect 
contentment,  and  Catherine  had  no  qualms  about  it.  If  there 
was  good  news,  it  was  presented  in  its  most  sugared  form  to 
Mrs.  Leyburn ;  but  the  moment  any  element  of  pain  and  diffi- 
culty cropped  up  in  the  common  life,  it  was  pounced  upon  and 
appropriated  by  Catherine,  aided  and  abetted  by  the  girls,  and 
Mrs.  Leyburn  knew  no  more  about  it  than  an  un weaned  babe. 

So  that  Catherine  was  thinking  at  most  of  some  misconduct 
of  a  Perth  dyer  with  regard  to  her  mother's  best  gray  poplin, 
when  one  of  the  greatest  surprises  of  her  life  burst  upon  ner. 

She  was  in  Mrs.  Leyburn's  bedroom  that  night,  helping  to 
put  away  her  mother's  things,  as  her  custom  was.  She  had  just 
taken  off  the  widow's  cap,  caressing  as  she  did  so  the  brown  hair 
underneath,  which  was  still  soft  and  plentiful,  when  Mrs.  Ley- 
burn  turned  upon  her.  '  Catherine  ! '  she  said  in  an  agitated 
voice,  laying  a  thin  hand  on  her  daughter's  arm.  '  Oh,  Catherine, 
I  want  to  speak  to  you  ! ' 

Catherine  knelt  lightly  down  by  her  mother's  side,  and  put 
her  arms  round  her  waist. 

'  Yes,  mother  darling,'  she  said,  half  smiling. 

'  Oh,  Catherine  !  if — if — you  like  Mr.  Elsmere,  don't  mind — 
don't  think — about  us,  dear.  We  can  manage — we  can  manage, 
dear !' 

The  change  that  took  place  in  Catherine  Leyburn's  face  is 
indescribable.  She  rose  instantly,  her  arms  falling  behind  her, 
her  beautiful  brows  drawn  together.  Mrs.  Leyburn  looked  up  at 
her  with  a  pathetic  mixture  of  helplessness,  alarm,  entreaty. 

'  Mother,  who  has  been  talking  to  you  about  Mr.  Elsmere  and 
me  1 '  demanded  Catherine. 

'  Oh,  never  mind,  dear,  never  mind.'  said  the  widow  hastily  ; 
'  I  should  have  seen  it  myself — oh,  I  know  I  should  ;  but  I'm  a 
bad  mother,  Catherine  ! '  And  she  caught  her  daughter's  dress 
and  drew  her  towards  her.  '  Do  you  care  for  him  ? ' 

Catherine  did  not  answer.  She  knelt  down  again,  and  laid 
her  head  on  her  mother's  hands. 

'I  want  nothing,'  she  said  presently  in  a  low  voice  of  intense 


J 


128  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

emotion — '  I  want  nothing  but  you  and  the  girls.  You  are  my 
life,  I  ask  for  nothing  more.  I  am  abundantly — content.' 

Mrs.  Leyburn  gazed  down  on  her  with  infinite  perplexity. 
The  brown  hair,  escaped  from  the  cap,  had  fallen  about  her  still 
pretty  neck,  a  pink  spot  of  excitement  was  on  each  gently- 
hollowed  cheek  ;  she  looked  almost  younger  than  her  pale 
daughter. 

'  But — he  is  very  nice,'  she  said  timidly.  '  And  he  has  a  good 
living.  Catherine,  you  ought  to  be  a  clergyman's  wife.' 

'I  ought  to  be,  and  I  am  your  daughter,'  said  Catherine, 
smiling  a  little  with  an  unsteady  lip,  and  kissing  her  hand. 

Mrs.  Leyburn  sighed  and  looked  straight  before  her.  Perhaps 
in  imagination  she  saw  the  vicar's  wife.  '  I  think — I  think,'  she 
said  very  seriously,  '  I  should  like  it ! ' 

Catherine  straightened  herself  brusquely  at  that.  It  was  as 
though  she  had  felt  a  blow. 

'  Mother ! '  she  cried,  with  a  stifled  accent  of  pain,  and  yet 
still  trying  to  smile,  '  do  you  want  to  send  me  away  ? ' 

'  No,  no  ! '  cried  Mrs.  Leyburn  hastily.  '  But  if  a  nice  man 
wants  you  to  marry  him,  Catherine  1  Your  father  would  have 
liked  him — oh,  I  know  your  father  would  have  liked  him  !  And 
his  manners  to  me  are  so  pretty,  I  shouldn't  mind  being  his 
mother-in-law.  And  the  girls  have  no  brother,  you  know,  dear. 
Your  father  was  always  so  sorry  about  that.' 

She  spoke  with  pleading  agitation,  her  own  tempting  imagina- 
tions— the  pallor,  the  latent  storm  of  Catherine's  look — exciting 
her  more  and  more. 

Catherine  was  silent  a  moment,  then  she  caught  her  mother's 
hand  again. 

'  Dear  little  mother — dear,  kind  little  mother  !  You  are  an 
angel,  you  always  are.  But  I  think,  if  you'll  keep  me,  I'll 
stay.' 

And  she  once  more  rested  her  head  clingingly  on  Mrs.  Ley- 
burn's  knee. 

'  But  do  you — do  you  love  him,  Catherine  ? ' 

'  I  love  you,  mother,  and  the  girls,  and  my  life  here.' 

'  Oh  dear,'  sighed  Mrs  Leyburn,  as  though  addressing  a  third 
person,  the  tears  in  her  mild  eyes,  '  she  won't,  and  she  would  like 
it,  and  so  should  I ! ' 

Catherine  rose,  stung  beyond  bearing. 

'  And  I  count  for  nothing  to  you,  mother ! '  her  deep  voice 
quivering.  '  You  could  put  me  aside,  you  and  the  girls,  and  live 
as  though  I  had  never  been  ! ' 

'But  you  would  be  a  great  deal  to  us  if  you  did  marry, 
Catherine  ! '  cried  Mrs.  Leyburn,  almost  with  an  accent  of  pet- 
tishness.  '  People  have  to  do  without  their  daughters.  There's 
Agnes — I  often  think,  as  it  is,  you  might  let  her  do  more.  And 
if  Rose  were  troublesome,  why,  you  know  it  might  be  a  good 
thing — a  very  good  thing — if  there  were  a  man  to  take  her  in 
hand ! ' 


CHAP,  ix  WESTMORELAND  129 

'And  you,  mother,  without  me?'  cried  poor  Catherine, 
choked. 

'  Oh,  I  should  come  and  see  you,'  said  Mrs.  Leyburn,  brighten- 
ing. '  They  say  it  is  such  a  nice  house,  Catherine,  and  such 
pretty  country ;  and  I'm  sure  I  should  like  his  mother,  though 
she  is  Irish  ! ' 

It  was  the  bitterest  moment  of  Catherine  Leyburn's  life.  In 
it  the  heroic  dream  of  years  broke  down.  Nay,  the  shrivelling 
ironic  touch  of  circumstance  laid  upon  it  made  it  look  even  in 
her  own  eyes  almost  ridiculous.  What  had  she  been  living  for, 
praying  for,  all  these  years'?  She  threw  herself  down  by  the 
widow's  side,  her  face  working  with  a  passion  that  terrified  Mrs. 
Leyburn. 

'  Oli,  mother,  say  you  would  miss  me — say  you  would  miss 
me  if  I  went ! ' 

Then  Mrs.  Leyburn  herself  broke  down,  and  the  two  women 
clung  to  each  other,  weeping.  Catherine's  sore  heart  was  soothed 
a  little  by  her  mother's  tears,  and  by  the  broken  words  of  endear- 
ment that  were  lavished  on  her.  But  through  it  all  she  felt  that 
the  excited  imaginative  desire  in  Mrs.  Leyburn  still  persisted. 
It  was  the  cheapening  —  the  vulgarising,  so  to  speak,  of  her 
whole  existence. 

In  the  course  of  their  long  embrace  Mrs.  Leyburn  let  fall 
various  items  of  news  that  showed  Catherine  very  plainly  who 
had  been  at  work  upon  her  mother,  and  one  of  which  startled 
her. 

'  He  comes  back  to-night,  my  dear — and  he  goes  on  Saturday. 
Oh,  and,  Catherine,  Mrs.  Thornburgh  says  he  does  care  so  much. 
Poor  young  man  ! ' 

And  Mrs.  Leyburn  looked  up  at  her  now  standing  daughter 
with  eyes  as  woe-begone  for  Elsmere  as  for  herself. 

'  Don't  talk  about  it  any  more,  mother,'  Catherine  implored. 
'  You  won't  sleep,  and  I  shall  be  more  wroth  with  Mrs.  Thorn- 
burgh  than  I  am  already.' 

Mrs.  Leyburn  let  herself  be  gradually  soothed  and  coerced, 
and  Catherine,  with  a  last  kiss  to  the  delicate  emaciated  fingers 
on  which  the  worn  wedding-ring  lay  slipping  forward — in  itself 
a  history — left  her  at  last  to  sleep. 

'  And  I  don't  know  much  more  than  when  I  began  ! '  sighed 
the  perplexed  widow  to  herself.  '  Oh,  I  wish  Richard  was  here 
— I  do  ! ' 

Catherine's  night  was  a  night  of  intense  mental  struggle. 
Her  struggle  was  one  with  which  the  modern  world  has  perhaps 
but  scant  sympathy.  Instinctively  we  feel  such  things  out  of 
place  in  our  easy  indifferent  generation.  We  think  them  more 
than  half  unreal.  We  are  so  apt  to  take  it  for  granted  that  the 
world  has  outgrown  the  religious  thirst  for  sanctification,  for  a 
perfect  moral  consistency,  as  it  has  outgrown  so  many  of  the 
older  complications  of  the  sentiment  of  honour.  And  meanwhile 
half  the  tragedy  of  our  time  lies  in  this  perpetual  clashing  of 


130  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

two  estimates  of  life— the  estimate  which  is  the  offspring  of  the 
scientific  spirit,  and  which  is  for  ever  making  the  visible  world 
fairer  and  more  desirable  in  mortal  eyes ;  and  the  estimate  of 
Saint  Augustine. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  owing  to  some  travelling  difficulties, 
the  vicar  and  Elsmere  did  not  get  home  till  noon  on  Friday. 
Catherine  knew  nothing  of  either  delay  or  arrival.  Mrs.  Ley- 
burn  watched  her  with  anxious  timidity,  but  she  never  men- 
tioned Elsmere's  name  to  any  one  on  the  Friday  morning,  and 
no  one  dared  speak  of  him  to  her.  She  came  home  in  the  after- 
noon from  the  Backhouses'  absorbed  apparently  in  the  state  of 
the  dying  girl,  took  a  couple  of  hours'  rest,  and  hurried  off  again. 
She  passed  the  vicarage  with  bent  head,  and  never  looked  up. 

'  She  is  gone  ! '  said  Rose  to  Agnes  as  she  stood  at  the  window 
looking  after  her  sister's  retreating  figure.  '  It  is  all  over  !  They 
can't  meet  now.  He  will  be  off  by  nine  to-morrow.' 

The  girl  spoke  with  a  lump  in  her  throat,  and  flung  herself 
down  by  the  window,  moodily  watching  the  dark  form  against 
the  fells.  Catherine's  coldness  seemed  to  make  all  life  colder 
and  more  chilling — to  fling  a  hard  denial  in  the  face  of  the 
dearest  claims  of  earth. 

The  stormy  light  of  the  afternoon  was  fading  towards  sunset. 
Catherine  walked  on  fast  towards  the  group  of  houses  at  the 
head  of  the  valley,  in  one  of  which  lived  the  two  old  carriers 
who  had  worked  such  havoc  with  Mrs.  Thornburgh's  housekeep- 
ing arrangements.  She  was  tired  physically,  but  she  was  still 
more  tired  mentally.  She  had  the  bruised  feeling  of  one  who 
has  been  humiliated  before  the  world  and  before  herself.  Her 
self-respect  was  for  the  moment  crushed,  and  the  breach  made 
in  the  wholeness  of  personal  dignity  had  produced  a  strange 
slackness  of  nerve,  extending  both  to  body  and  mind.  She  had 
been  convicted,  it  seemed  to  her,  in  her  own  eyes,  and  in  those 
of  her  world,  of  an  egregious  over-estimate  of  her  own  value. 
She  walked  with  hung  head  like  one  ashamed,  the  overstrung 
religious  sense  deepening  her  discomfiture  at  every  step.  How 
rich  her  life  had  always  been  in  the  conviction  of  usefulness — 
nay,  indispensableness  !  Her  mother's  persuasions  had  dashed 
it  from  her.  And  religious  scruple,  for  her  torment,  showed  her 
her  past,  transformed,  alloyed  with  all  sorts  of  personal  prides 
and  cravings,  which  stood  unmasked  now  in  a  white  light. 

And  he  ?  Still  near  her  for  a  few  short  hours  !  Every  pulse 
in  her  had  thrilled  as  she  had  passed  the  house  which  sheltered 
him.  But  she  will  see  him  no  more.  And  she  is  glad.  If  he 
had  stayed  on,  he  too  would  have  discovered  how  cheaply  they 
held  her — those  dear  ones  of  hers  for  whom  she  had  lived  till 
now  !  And  she  might  have  weakly  yielded  to  his  pity  what  she 
had  refused  to  his  homage.  The  strong  nature  is  half  tortured, 
half  soothed  by  the  prospect  of  his  going.  Perhaps  when  he  is 
gone  she  will  recover  something  of  that  moral  equilibrium  which 


CHAI-.  x  WESTMORELAND  131 

has  been  so  shaken.  At  present  she  is  a  riddle  to  herself,  in- 
vaded by  a  force  she  has  no  power  to  cope  with,  feeling  the 
moral  ground  of  years  crumbling  beneath  her,  and  struggling 
feverishly  for  self-control. 

As  she  neared  the  head  of  the  valley  the  wind  became  less 
tempestuous.  The  great  wall  of  High  Fell,  towards  which  she 
was  walking,  seemed  to  shelter  her  from  its  worst  violence. 
But  the  hurrying  clouds,  the  gleams  of  lurid  light  which  every 
now  and  then  penetrated  into  the  valley  from  the  west,  across 
the  dip  leading  to  Shanmoor,  the  voice  of  the  river  answering 
the  voice  of  the  wind,  and  the  deep  unbroken  shadow  that 
covered  the  group  of  houses  and  trees  towards  which  she  was 
walking,  all  served  to  heighten  the  nervous  depression  which 
had  taken  hold  of  her.  As  she  neared  the  bridge,  however, 
leading  to  the  little  hamlet,  beyond  which  northwards  all  was 
stony  loneliness  and  desolation,  and  saw  in  front  of  her  the 
gray  stone  house,  backed  by  the  sombre  red  of  a  great  copper 
beech,  and  overhung  by  crags,  she  had  perforce  to  take  herself 
by  both  hands,  try  and  realise  her  mission  afresh,  and  the  scene 
which  lay  before  her. 


CHAPTEE  X 

MAKY  BACKHOUSE,  the  girl  whom  Catherine  had  been  visiting 
with  regularity  for  many  weeks,  and  whose  frail  life  was  this 
evening  nearing  a  terrible  and  long-expected  crisis,  was  the 
victim  of  a  fate  sordid  and  common  enough,  yet  not  without  its 
elements  of  dark  poetry.  Some  fifteen  months  before  this  Mid- 
summer Day  she  had  been  the  mistress  of  the  lonely  old  house  in 
which  her  father  and  uncle  had  passed  their  whole  lives,  in 
which  she  had  been  born,  and  in  which,  amid  snowdrifts  so 
deep  that  no  doctor  could  reach  them,  her  mother  had  passed 
away.  She  had  been  then  strong  and  well  favoured,  possessed 
of  a  certain  masculine  black-browed  beauty,  and  of  a  temper 
which  sometimes  gave  to  it  an  edge  and  glow  such  as  an  artist 
of  ambition  might  have  been  glad  to  catch.  At  the  bottom  of 
all  the  outward  sauvagerie,  however,  there  was  a  heart,  and 
strong  wants,  which  only  affection  and  companionship  could 
satisfy  and  tame.  Neither  was  to  be  found  in  sufficient  measure 
within  her  home.  Her  father  and  she  were  on  fairly  good  terms, 
and  had  for  each  other  up  to  a  certain  point  the  natural  instincts 
of  kinship.  On  her  uncle,  whom  she  regarded  as  half-witted, 
she  bestowed  alternate  tolerance  and  jeers.  She  was,  indeed, 
the  only  person  whose  remonstrances  ever  got  under  the  wool 
with  old  Jim,  and  her  sharp  tongue  had  sometimes  a  cowing 
effect  on  his  curious  nonchalance  which  nothing  else  had.  For 
the  rest,  they  had  no  neighbours  with  whom  the  girl  could 
fraternise,  and  Whinborough  was  "too  far  off  to  provide  any 


132  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

adequate  food  for  her  vague  hunger  after  emotion  and  excite- 
ment. 

In  this  dangerous  morbid  state  she  fell  a  victim  to  the  very 
coarse  attractions  of  a  young  farmer  in  the  neighbouring  valley 
of  Shanmoor.  He  was  a  brute  with  a  handsome  face,  and  a 
nature  in  which  whatever  grains  of  heart  and  conscience  might 
have  been  interfused  with  the  original  composition  had  been 
long  since  swamped.  Mary,  who  had  recklessly  flung  herself 
into  his  power  on  one  or  two  occasions,  from  a  mixture  of 
motives,  partly  passion,  partly  jealousy,  partly  ennui,  awoke  one 
day  to  find  herself  ruined,  and  a  grim  future  hung  before  her. 
She  had  realised  her  doom  for  the  first  time  in  its  entirety  on 
the  Midsummer  Day  preceding  that  we  are  now  describing.  On 
that  day  she  had  walked  over  to  Shanmoor  in  a  fever  of  dumb 
rage  and  despair,  to  claim  from  her  betrayer  the  fulfilment  of 
his  promise  of  marriage.  He  had  laughed  at  her,  and  she  had 
fled  home  in  the  warm  rainy  dusk,  a  prey  to  all  those  torturing 
terrors  which  only  a  woman  in  extremis  can  know.  And  on  her 
way  back  she  had  seen  the  ghost  or  '  bogle '  of  Deep  Crag ;  the 
ghost  had  spoken  to  her,  and  she  had  reached  home  more  dead 
than  alive,  having  received  what  she  at  once  recognised  as  her 
death  sentence. 

What  had  she  seen  ?  An  effect  of  moonlit  mist — a  shepherd 
boy  bent  on  a  practical  joke — a  gleam  of  white  waterfall  among 
the  darkening  rocks?  What  had  she  heard?  The  evening 
greeting  of  a  passer-by,  wafted  down  to  her  from  some  higher 
path  along  the  fell  ?  distant  voices  in  the  farm  enclosures  beneath 
her  feet  ?  or  simply  the  eerie  sounds  of  the  mountain,  those  weird 
earth-whispers  which  haunt  the  lonely  places  of  nature  ?  Who 
can  tell  ?  Nerves  and  brain  were  strained  to  their  uttermost. 
The  legend  of  the  ghost — of  the  girl  who  had  thrown  her  baby 
and  herself  into  the  tarn  under  the  frowning  precipitous  cliffs 
which  marked  the  western  end  of  High  Fell,  and  who  had  since 
then  walked  the  lonely  road  to  Shanmoor  every  Midsummer 
Night,  with  her  moaning  child  upon  her  arm — had  flashed  into 
Mary's  mind  as  she  left  the  white-walled  village  of  Shanmoor 
behind  her,  and  climbed  upward  with  her  shame  and  her  secret 
into  the  mists.  To  see  the  bogle  was  merely  distressing  and 
untoward ;  to  be  spoken  to  by  the  phantom  voice  was  death. 
No  one  so  addressed  could  hope  to  survive  the  following  Mid- 
summer Day.  Revolving  these  things  in  her  mind,  along  with 
the  terrible  details  of  her  own  story,  the  exhausted  girl  had  seen 
her  vision,  and,  as  she  firmly  believed,  incurred  her  doom. 

A  week  later  she  had  disappeared  from  home  and  from  the 
neighbourhood.  The  darkest  stories  were  afloat.  She  had  taken 
some  money  with  her,  and  all  trace  of  her  was  lost.  The  father 
had  a  period  of  gloomy  taciturnity,  during  which  his  principal 
relief  was  got  out  of  jeering  and  girding  at  his  elder  brother, 
the  noodle's  eyes  wandered  and  glittered  more ;  his  shrunken 
frame  seemed  more  shrunken  as  he  sat  dangling  his  spindle  legs 


CHAP,  x  WESTMORELAND  133 

from  the  shaft  of  the  carrier's  cart ;  his  absence  of  mind  was  for 
a  time  more  marked,  and  excused  with  less  buoyancy  and  in- 
ventiveness than  usual.  But  otherwise  all  went  on  as  before. 
John  Backhouse  took  no  step,  and  for  nine  months  nothing  was 
heard  of  his  daughter. 

At  last  one  cheerless  March  afternoon,  Jim,  coming  back  first 
from  the  Wednesday  round  with  the  cart,  entered  the  farm 
kitchen,  while  John  Backhouse  was  still  wrangling  at  one  of  the 
other  farmhouses  of  the  hamlet  about  some  disputed  payment. 
The  old  man  came  in  cold  and  weary,  and  the  sight  of  the  half- 
tended  kitchen  and  neglected  fire — they  paid  a  neighbour  to  do 
the  housework,  as  far  as  the  care  of  her  own  seven  children 
would  let  her — suddenly  revived  in  his  slippery  mind  the 
memory  of  his  niece,  who,  with  all  her  faults,  had  had  the 
makings  of  a  housewife,  and  for  whom,  in  spite  of  her  flouts 
and  jeers,  he  had  always  cherished  a  secret  admiration.  As  he 
came  in  he  noticed  that  the  door  to  the  left  hand,  leading  into 
what  Westmoreland  folk  call  the  'house'  or  sitting-room  of  the 
farm,  was  open.  The  room  had  hardly  been  used  since  Mary's 
flight,  and  the  few  pieces  of  black  oak  and  shining  mahogany 
which  adorned  it  had  long  ago  fallen  from  their  pristine 
polish.  The  geraniums  an.d  fuchsias  with  which  she  had  filled 
the  window  all  the  summer  before  had  died  into  dry  blackened 
stalks ;  and  the  dust  lay  heavy  on  the  room,  in  spite  of  the 
well-meant  but  wholly  ineffective  efforts  of  the  charwoman  next 
door.  The  two  old  men  had  avoided  the  place  for  months 
past  by  common  consent,  and  the  door  into  it  was  hardly  ever 
opened. 

Now,  however,  it  stood  aiar,  and  old  Jim  going  up  to  shut  it, 
and  looking  in,  was  struck  dumb  with  astonishment.  For  there 
on  a  wooden  rocking-chair,  which  had  been  her  mother's  favourite 
seat,  sat  Mary  Backhouse,  her  feet  on  the  curved  brass  fender, 
her  eyes  staring  into  the  parlour  grate.  Her  clothes,  her  face, 
her  attitude  of  cowering  chill  and  mortal  fatigue,  produced  an 
impression  which  struck  through  the  old  man's  dull  senses,  and 
made  him  tremble  so  that  his  hand  dropped  from  the  handle  of 
the  door.  The  slight  sound  roused  Mary,  and  she  turned  towards 
him.  She  said  nothing  for  a  few  seconds,  her  hollow  black  eyes 
fixed  upon  him  ;  then  with  a  ghastly  smile,  and  a  voice  so  hoarse 
as  to  be  scarcely  audible — 

'  Weel,  aa've  coom  back.    Ye'd  maybe  not  expect  me  ? ' 

There  was  a  sound  behind  on  the  cobbles  outside  the  kitchen 
door. 

'  Yur  feyther  ! '  cried  Jim  between  his  teeth.  '  Gang  upstairs 
wi'  ye.'  And  he  pointed  to  a  door  in  the  wall  concealing  a 
staircase  to  the  upper  storey. 

She  sprang  up,  looked  at  the  door  and  at  him  irresolutely, 
and  then  stayed  where  she  was,  gaunt,  pale,  fever-eyed,  the 
wreck  and  ghost  of  her  old  self. 

The-steps  neared.    There  was  a  rough  voice  in  the  kitchen,  a 


134  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

surprised  exclamation,  and  her  father  had  pushed  past  his 
brother  into  the  room. 

John  Backhouse  no  sooner  saw  his  daughter  than  his  dull 
weather-beaten  face  flamed  into  violence.  With  an  oath  he 
raised  the  heavy  whip  he  held  in  his  hand,  and  flung  himself 
towards  her. 

'  Naw,  ye'll  not  du'at ! '  cried  Jim,  throwing  himself  with  all 
his  feeble  strength  on  to  his  brother's  arm.  John  swore  and 
struggled,  but  the  old  man  stuck  like  a  limpet. 

'  You  let  'un  aleann,'  said  Mary,  drawing  her  tattered  shawl 
over  her  breast.  '  If  he  aims  to  kill  me,  aa'll  not  say  naa.  But 
he  needn't  moider  hisself !  There's  them  abuve  as  ha'  taken 
care  o'  that ! ' 

She  sank  again  into  her  chair,  as  though  her  limbs  could  not 
support  her,  and  her  eyes  closed  in  the  utter  indifference  of  a 
fatigue  which  had  made  even  fear  impossible. 

The  father's  arm  dropped  •  he  stood  there  sullenly  looking  at 
her.  Jim,  thinking  she  haa  fainted,  went  up  to  her,  took  a 
glass  of  water  out  of  which  she  had  already  been  drinking  from 
the  mahogany  table,  and  held  it  to  her  lips.  She  drank  a  little, 
and  then  with  a  desperate  effort  raised  herself,  and  clutching 
the  arm  of  the  chair,  faced  her  father. 

'  Ye'll  not  hev  to  wait  lang.  Doan't  ye  fash  yersel.  Maybe 
it  ull  comfort  ye  to  knaw  summat !  Lasst  Midsummer  Day  aa 
was  on  t'  Shanmoor  road,  i'  t'  gloaming.  An'  aa  saw  theer  t' 
bogle — thee  knaws,  t'  bogle  o'  Bleacliff  Tarn ;  an'  she  turned 
hersel,  an'  she  spoak  to  me  ! ' 

She  uttered  the  last  words  with  a  grim  emphasis,  dwelling 
on  each,  the  whole  life  of  the  wasted  face  concentrated  in  the 
terrible  black  eyes,  which  gazed  past  the  two  figures  within 
their  immediate  range  into  a  vacancy  peopled  with  horror. 
Then  a  film  came  over  them,  the  grip  relaxed,  and  she  fell  back 
with  a  lurch  of  the  rocking-chair  in  a  dead  swoon. 

With  the  help  of  the  neighbour  from  next  door,  Jim  got  her 
upstairs  into  the  room  that  had  been  hers.  She  awoke  from 
her  swoon  only  to  fall  into  the  torpid  sleep  of  exhaustion,  which 
lasted  for  twelve  hours. 

'  Keep  her  oot  o'  ma  way,'  said  the  father  with  an  oath  to  Jim, 
'  or  aa'll  not  answer  nayther  for  her  nor  me  ! ' 

She  needed  no  telling.  She  soon  crept  downstairs  again,  and 
went  to  the  task  of  house-cleaning.  The  two  men  lived  in  the 
kitchen  as  before  ;  when  they  were  at  home  she  ate  and  sat  in 
the  parlour  alone.  Jim  watched  her  as  far  as  his  dull  brain  was 
capable  of  watching,  and  he  dimly  understood  that  she  was 
dying.  Both  men,  indeed,  felt  a  sort  of  superstitious  awe  of 
her,  she  was  so  changed,  so  unearthly.  As  for  the  story  of  the 
ghost,  the  old  popular  superstitions  are  almost  dead  in  the 
Cumbrian  mountains,  and  the  shrewd  north-country  peasant  is 
in  many  places  <juite  as  scornfully  ready  to  sacrifice  his  ghosts 
to  the  Time  Spirit  as  any  '  bold  bad'  haunter  of  scientific  associa- 


CHAP,  x  WESTMORELAND  135 

tions  could  wish  him  to  be.  But  in  a  few  of  the  remoter  valleys 
they  still  linger,  though  beneath  the  surface.  Either  of  the 
Backhouses,  or  Mary  in  her  days  of  health,  would  have  suffered 
many  things  rather  than  allow  a  stranger  to  suppose  they 
placed  the  smallest  credence  in  the  story  of  Bleacliff  Tarn.  But, 
all  the  same,  the  story  which  each  had  heard  in  childhood,  on 
stormy  nights  perhaps,  when  the  mountain  side  was  awful 
with  the  sounds  of  tempest,  had  grown  up  with  them,  had 
entered  deep  into  the  tissue  of  consciousness.  In  Mary's  imagi- 
nation the  ideas  and  images  connected  with  it  had  now,  under 
the  stimulus  of  circumstance,  become  instinct  with  a  living 
pursuing  terror.  But  they  were  present,  though  in  a  duller, 
blunter  state,  in  the  minds  of  her  father  and  uncle  ;  and  as  the 
weeks  passed  on,  and  the  days  lengthened  towards  midsummer, 
a  sort  of  brooding  horror  seemed  to  settle  on  the  house. 

Mary  grew  weaker  and  weaker ;  her  cough  kept  Jim  awake 
at  nights  ;  once  or  twice  when  he  went  to  help  her  with  a  piece 
of  work  which  not  even  her  extraordinary  will  could  carry 
her  through,  her  hand  burnt  him  like  a  hot  cinder.  But  she 
kept  all  other  women  out  of  the  house  by  her  mad,  strange 
ways ;  and  if  her  uncle  showed  any  consciousness  of  her  state, 
she  turned  upon  him  with  her  old  temper,  which  had  lost  all  its 
former  stormy  grace,  and  had  become  ghastly  by  the  contrast  it 
brought  out  between  the  tempestuous  vindictive  soul  and  the 
shaken  weakness  of  frame. 

A  doctor  would  have  discovered  at  once  that  what  was  wrong 
with  her  was  phthisis,  complicated  with  insanity ;  and  the 
insanity,  instead  of  taking  the  hopeful  optimistic  tinge  which 
is  characteristic  of  the  insanity  of  consumption,  had  rather 
assumed  the  colour  of  the  events  from  which  the  disease  itself 
had  started.  Cold,  exposure,  long-continued  agony  of  mind  and 
body — the  madness  intertwined  with  an  illness  which  had  such 
roots  as  these  was  naturally  a  madness  of  despair.  One  of  its 
principal  signs  was  the  fixed  idea  as  to  Midsummer  Day.  It 
never  occurred  to  her  as  possible  that  her  life  should  be  pro- 
longed beyond  that  limit.  Every  night,  as  she  dragged  herself 
up  the  steep  little  staircase  to  her  room,  she  checked  off  the  day 
which  had  just  passed  from  the  days  she  had  still  to  live.  She 
had  made  all  her  arrangements  ;  she  had  even  sewed  with  her 
own  hands,  and  that  without  any  sense  of  special  horror,  but 
rather  in  the  provident  peasant  way,  the  dress  in  which  she  was 
to  be  carried  to  her  grave. 

At  last  one  day,  her  father,  coming  unexpectedly  into  the 
yard,  saw  her  carrying  a  heavy  pail  of  water  from  the  pump. 
Something  stirred  within  him,  and  he  went  up  to  her  and 
forcibly  took  it  from  her.  Their  looks  met,  and  her  poor  mad 
eyes  gazed  intensely  into  his.  As  he  moved  forward  towards 
the  house  she  crept  after  him,  passing  him  into  the  parlour, 
where  she  sank  down  breathless  on  the  settle  where  she  had 
been  sleeping  for  the  last  few  nights,  rather  than  face  climbing' 


136  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

the  stairs.     For  the  first  time  he  followed  her,  watching  her 

gasping  struggle  for  breath,  in  spite  of  her  impatient  motion  to 
im  to  go.  After  a  few  seconds  he  left  her,  took  his  hat,  went 
out,  saddled  his  horse,  and  rode  off  to  Whinborough.  He  got 
Dr.  Baker  to  promise  to  come  over  on  the  morrow,  and  on  his 
way  back  he  called  and  requested  to  see  Catherine  Leyburn. 
He  stammeringly  asked  her  to  come  and  visit  his  daughter  who 
was  ill  and  lonesome,  and  when  she  consented  gladly  he  went 
on  his  way  feeling  a  load  off  his  mind.  What  he  had  just  done 
had  been  due  to  an  undefined,  but  still  vehement  prompting  of 
conscience.  It  did  not  make  it  any  the  less  probable  that  the 
girl  would  die  on  or  before  Midsummer  Day ;  but,  supposing 
her  story  were  true,  it  absolved  him  from  any  charge  of  assist- 
ance to  the  designs  of  those  grisly  powers  in  whose  clutch  she 
was. 

When  the  doctor  came  next  morning  a  change  for  the  worse 
had  taken  place,  and  she  was  too  feeble  actively  to  resent  his 
appearance.  She  lay  there  on  the  settle,  every  now  and  then 
making  superhuman  efforts  to  get  up,  which  generally  ended  in 
a  swoon.  She  refused  to  take  any  medicine,  she  would  hardly 
take  any  food,  and  to  the  doctor's  questions  she  returned  no 
answer  whatever.  In  the  same  way,  when  Catherine  came,  she 
would  be  absolutely  silent,  looking  at  her  with  glittering, 
feverish  eyes,  but  taking  no  notice  at  all,  whether  she  read  or 
talked,  or  simply  sat  quietly  beside  her. 

After  the  silent  period,  as  the  days  went  on,  and  Midsummer 
Day  drew  nearer,  there  supervened  a  period  of  intermittent 
delirium.  In  the  evenings,  especially  when  her  temperature 
rose,  she  became  talkative  and  incoherent,  and  Catherine  would 
sometimes  .tremble  as  she  caught  the  sentences  which,  little  by 
little,  built  up  the  girl's  hidden  tragedy  before  her  eyes. 
London  streets,  London  lights,  London  darkness,  the  agony  of 
an  endless  wandering,  the  little  clinging  puny  life,  which  could 
never  be  stilled  or  satisfied,  biting  cold,  intolerable  pain,  the 
cheerless  workhouse  order,  and,  finally,  the  arms  without  a 
burden,  the  breast  without  a  child — these  were  the  sharp 
fragments  of  experience,  so  common,  so  terrible  to  the  end  of 
time,  which  rose  on  the  troubled  surface  of  Mary  Backhouse's 
delirium,  and  smote  the  tender  heart  of  the  listener. 

Then  in  the  mornings  she  would  lie  suspicious  and  silent, 
watching  Catherine's  face  with  the  long  gaze  of  exhaustion,  as 
though  trying  to  find  out  from  it  whether  her  secret  had  escaped 
her.  The  doctor,  who  had  gathered  the  story  of  the  '  bogle '  from 
Catherine,  to  whom  Jim  had  told  it,  briefly  and  reluctantly,  and 
with  an  absolute  reservation  of  his  own  views  on  the  matter, 
recommended  that  if  possible  they  should  try  and  deceive  her 
as  to  the  date  of  the  day  and  month.  Mere  nervous  excitement 
might,  he  thought,  be  enough  to  kill  her  when  the  actual  day 
and  hour  came  round.  But  all  their  attempts  were  useless. 
Nothing  distracted  the  intense  sleepless  attention  with  which 


CHAP,  x  WESTMORELAND  137 

the  darkened  mind  kept  always  in  view  that  one  absorbing 
expectation.  Words  fell  from  her  at  night  which  seemed  to 
show  that  she  expected  a  summons — a  voice  along  the  fell, 
calling  her  spirit  into  the  dark.  And  then  would  come  the 
shriek,  the  struggle  to  get  loose,  the  choked  waking,  the  wander- 
ing, horror-stricken  eyes,  subsiding  by  degrees  into  the  old 
silent  watch. 

On  the  morning  of  the  23d,  when  Robert,  sitting  at  his  work, 
was  looking  at  Burwood  through  the  window  in  the  flattering 
belief  that  Catherine  was  the  captive  of  the  weather,  she  had 
spent  an  hour  or  more  with  Mary  Backhouse,  and  the  austere 
influences  of  the  visit  had  perhaps  had  more  share  than  she 
knew  in  determining  her  own  mood  that  day.  The  world 
seemed  such  dross,  the  pretences  of  personal  happiness  so 
hollow  and  delusive,  after  such  a  sight !  The  girl  lay  dying 
fast,  with  a  look  oi  extraordinary  attentiveness  in  her  face, 
hearing  every  noise,  every  footfall,  and,  as  it  seemed  to 
Catherine,  in  a  mood  of  inward  joy.  She  took,  moreover,  some 
notice  of  her  visitor.  As  a  rough  tomboy  of  fourteen,  she  had 
shown  Catherine,  who  had  taught  her  in  the  school  sometimes, 
and  had  especially  won  her  regard  on  one  occasion  by  a  present 
of  some  article  of  dress,  a  good  many  uncouth  signs  of  affection. 
On  the  morning  in  question  Catherine  fancied  she  saw  some- 
thing of  the  old  childish  expression  once  or  twice.  At  any  rate, 
there  was  no  doubt  her  presence  was  soothing,  as  she  read  in 
her  low  vibrating  voice,  or  sat  silently  stroking  the  emaciated 
hand,  raising  it  every  now  and  then  to  her  lips  with  a  rush  of 
that  intense  pitifulness  which  was  to  her  the  most  natural  of 
all  moods. 

The  doctor,  whom  she  met  there,  said  that  this  Istate  of  calm 
was  very  possibly  only  transitory.  The  night  had  been  passed 
in  a  succession  of  paroxysms,  and  they  were  almost  sure  to 
return  upon  her,  especially  as  he  could  get  her  to  swallow  none 
of  the  sedatives  which  might  have  carried  her  in  unconscious- 
ness past  the  fatal  moment.  She  would  have  none  of  them  ;  he 
thought  that  she  was  determined  to  allow  of  no  encroachments 
on  the  troubled  remnants  of  intelligence  still  left  to  her ;  so  the 
only  thing  to  be  done  was  to  wait  and  see  the  result.  '  I  will 
come  to-morrow,'  said  Catherine  briefly  ;  '  for  the  day  certainly, 
longer  if  necessary.'  She  had  long  ago  established  her  claim  to 
be  treated  seriously  as  a  nurse,  and  Dr.  Baker  made  no  objection. 
'  If  she  lives  so  long,'  he  said  dubiously.  '  The  Backhouses  and 
Mrs.  Irwin  [the  neighbour]  shall  be  close  at  hand.  I  will  come 
in  the  afternoon  and  try  to  get  her  to  take  an  opiate ;  but  I 
can't  give  it  her  by  force,  and  there  is  not  the  smallest  chance 
of  her  consenting  to  it.' 

All  through  Catherine's  own  struggle  and  pain  during  these 
two  days  the  image  of  the  dying  girl  had  lain  at  her  heart.  It 
served  her  as  the  crucifix  serves  the  Romanist ;  as  she  pressed 
it  into  her  thought,  it  recovered  from  time  to  time  the  failing 


138  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

forces  of  the  will.  Need  life  be  empty  because  self  was  left 
unsatisfied  ?  Now,  as  she  neared  the  hamlet,  the  quality  of  her 
nature  reasserted  itself.  The  personal  want  tugging  at  her 
senses,  the  personal  soreness,  the  cry  of  resentful  love,  were 
silenced.  What  place  had  they  in  the  presence  of  this  lonely 
agony  of 'death,  this  mystery,  this  opening  beyond?  The  old 
heroic  mood  revived  in  her.  Her  step  grew  swifter,  her  carriage 
more  erect,  and  as  she  entered  the  farm  kitchen  she  felt  herself 
once  more  ready  in  spirit  for  what  lay  before  her. 

From  the  next  room  there  came  a  succession  of  husky  sibilant 
sounds,  as  though  some  one  were  whispering  hurriedly  and 
continuously. 

After  her  subdued  greeting  she  looked  inquiringly  at  Jim. 

'She's  in  a  taaking  way'  said  Jim,  who  looked  more 
attenuated  and  his  face  more  like  a  pink  and  white  parchment 
than  ever.  '  She's  been  knacking  an'  taaking  a  long  while.  She 
woan't  know  ye.  Luke  ye,'  he  continued,  dropping  his  voice  as 
he  opened  the  '  house '  door  for  her ;  '  ef  you  want  ayder  ov  oos, 
you  jest  call  oot — sharp  !  Mrs.  Irwin,  she'll  stay  in  wi'  ye — she's 
not  af  eeard  ! ' 

The  superstitious  excitement  which  the  looks  and  gestures  of 
the  old  man  expressed  touched  Catherine's  imagination,  and 
she  entered  the  room  with  an  inward  shiver. 

Mary  Backhouse  lay  raised  high  on  her  pillows,  talking  to 
herself  or  to  imaginary  other  persons,  with  eyes  wide  open 
but  vacant,  and  senses  conscious  of  nothing  but  the  dream 
world  in  which  the  mind  was  wandering.  Catherine  sat 
softly  down  beside  her,  unnoticed,  thankful  for  the  chances  of 
disease.  If  this  delirium  lasted  till  the  ghost-hour — the  time  of 
twilight,  that  is  to  say,  which  would  begin  about  half-past 
eight,  and  the  duration  of  which  would  depend  on  the  cloudiness 
of  the  evening — was  over,  or,  better  still,  till  midnight  were 
past,  the  strain  on  the  girl's  agonised  senses  might  be  relieved, 
and  death  come  at  last  in  softer,  kinder  guise. 

'  Has  she  been  long  like  this  ? '  she  asked  softly  of  the  neigh- 
bour who  sat  quietly  knitting  by  the  evening  light. 

The  woman  looked  up  and  thought. 

'Ay!'  she  said.  'Aa  came  in  at  tea-time,  an'  she's  been 
maistly  taakin'  ivver  sence  ! ' 

The  incoherent  whisperings  and  restless  movements,  which 
obliged  Catherine  constantly  to  replace  the  coverings  over 
the  poor  wasted  and  fevered  body,  went  on  for  some  time. 
Catherine  noticed  presently,  with  a  little  thrill,  that  the  light 
was  beginning  to  change.  The  weather  was  growing  darker 
and  stormier  •  the  wind  shook  the  house  in  gusts ;  and  the 
farther  shoulder  of  High  Fell,  seen  in  distorted  outline  through 
the  casemented  window,  was  almost  hidden  by  the  trailing  rain 
clouds.  The  mournful  western  light  coming  from  behind  the 
house  struck  the  river  here  and  there ;  almost  everything  else 
was  gray  and  dark.  A  mountain  ash,  just  outside  the  window, 


CHAP,  x  WESTMORELAND  139 

brushed  the  panes  every  now  and  then  ;  and  in  the  silence 
every  surrounding  sound — the  rare  movements  in  the  next 
room,  the  voices  of  quarrelling  children  round  the  door  of  a 
neighbouring  house,  the  far-off  barking  of  dogs — made  itself 
distinctly  audible. 

Suddenly  Catherine,  sunk  in  painful  reverie,  noticed  that  the 
mutterings  from  the  bed  had  ceased  for  some  little  time.  She 
turned  her  chair,  and  was  startled  to  find  those  weird  eyes  fixed 
with  recognition  on  herself.  There  was  a  curious  malign 
intensity,  a  curious  triumph  in  them. 

'It  must  be — eight  o'clock,'  said  the  gasping  voice — ' eight 
o'clock;'  and  the  tone  became  a  whisper,  as  though  the  idea  thus 
half  involuntarily  revealed  had  been  drawn  jealously  back  into 
the  strongholds  of  consciousness. 

'  Mary,  said  Catherine,  falling  on  her  knees  beside  the  bed, 
and  taking  one  of  the  restless  hands  forcibly  into  her  own, 
'  can't  you  put  this  thought  away  from  you  ?  We  are  not  the 
playthings  of  evil  spirits — we  are  the  children  of  God  !  We  are 
in  His  hands.  No  evil  thing  can  harm  us  against  His  will.' 

It  was  the  first  time  for  many  days  she  had  spoken  openly  of 
the  thought  which  was  in  the  mind  of  all,  and  her  whole 
pleading  soul  was  in  her  pale,  beautiful  face.  There  was  no 
response  in  the  sick  girl's  countenance,  and  again  that  look  of 
triumph,  of  sinister  exultation.  They  had  tried  to  cheat  her 
into  sleeping,  and  living,  and  in  spite  of  them,  at  the  supreme 
moment,  every  sense  was  awake  and  expectant.  To  what  was 
the  materialised  peasant  imagination  looking  forward  ?  To  an 
actual  call,  an  actual  following  to  the  free  mountain-side,  the 
rush  of  the  wind,  the  phantom  figure  floating  on  before  her, 
bearing  her  into  the  heart  of  the  storm  ?  Dread  was  gone, 
pain  was  gone ;  there  was  only  rapt  excitement  and  fierce 
anticipation. 

'  Mary,'  said  Catherine  again,  mistaking  her  mood  for  one  of 
tense  defiance  and  despair,  '  Mary,  if  I  were  to  go  out  now  and 
leave  Mrs.  Irwin  with  you,  and  if  I  were  to  go  up  all  the  way  to 
the  top  of  Shanmoss  and  back  again,  and  if  I  could  tell  you 
there  was  nothing  there,  nothing  ! — if  I  were  to  stay  out  till  the 
dark  has  come — it  will  be  here  in  half  an  hour — and  you  could 
be  quite  sure  when  you  saw  me  again,  that  there  was  nothing 
near  you  but  the  dear  old  hills,  and  the  power  of  God,  could  you 
believe  me  and  try  and  rest  and  sleep  V 

Mary  looked  at  her  intently.  If  Catherine  could  have  seen 
clearly  in  the  dim  light  she  would  have  caught  something  of 
the  cunning  of  madness  slipping  into  the  dying  woman's 
expression.  While  she  waited  for  the  answer  there  was  a  noise 
in  the  kitchen  outside,  an  opening  of  the  outer  door,  and  a 
voice.  Catherine's  heart  stood  still.  She  had  to  make  a  super- 
human effort  to  keep  her  attention  fixed  on  Mary. 

'  Go  ! '  said  the  hoarse  whisper  close  beside  her,  and  the  girl 
lifted  her  wasted  hand,  and  pushed  her  visitor  from  her.  '  Go ! ' 


140  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

it  repeated  insistently,  with  a  sort  of  wild  beseeching;  then, 
brokenly,  the  gasping  breath  interrupting,  '  There's  naw  fear — 
naw  fear — fur  the  likes  o'  you  ! ' 

Catherine  rose. 

'  I'm  not  afraid,'  she  said  gently,  but  her  hand  shook  as  she 
pushed  her  chair  back  ;  '  God  is  everywhere,  Mary.' 

She  put  on  her  hat  and  cloak,  said  something  in  Mrs.  Irwin's 
ear,  and  stooped  to  kiss  the  brow  which  to  the  shuddering  sense 
under  her  will  seemed  already  cold  and  moist  with  the  sweats 
of  death.  Mary  watched  her  go ;  Mrs.  Irwin,  with  the  air  of 
one  bewildered,  drew  her  chair  nearer  to  the  settle ;  and  the 
light  of  the  fire,  shooting  and  dancing  through  the  June  twilight, 
threw  such  fantastic  shadows  over  the  face  on  the  pillow  that 
all  expression  was  lost.  What  was  moving  in  the  crazed  mind  ? 
Satisfaction,  perhaps,  at  having  got  rid  of  one  witness,  one  jailer, 
one  of  the  various  antagonistic  forces  surrounding  her?  She 
had  a  dim  frenzied  notion  she  should  have  to  fight  for  her 
liberty  when  the  call  came,  and  she  lay  tense  and  rigid,  waiting 
— the  images  of  insanity  whirling  through  her  brain,  while  the 
light  slowly,  slowly  waned. 

Catherine  opened  the  door  into  the  kitchen.  The  two 
carriers  were  standing  there,  and  .Robert  Elsmere  also  stood 
with  his  back  to  her,  talking  to  them  in  an  undertone. 

He  turned  at  the  sound  behind  him,  and  his  start  brought  a 
sudden  flush  to  Catherine's  cheek.  Her  face,  as  the  candle-light 
struck  it  amid  the  shadows  of  the  doorway,  was  like  an  angelic 
vision  to  him — the  heavenly  calm  of  it  just  exquisitely  broken 
by  the  wonder,  the  shock,  of  his  presence. 

'  You  here  ? '  he  cried,  coming  up  to  her,  and  taking  her  hand 
— what  secret  instinct  guided  him  ? — close  in  both  of  his.  '  I 
never  dreamt  of  it — so  late.  My  cousin  sent  me  over — she 
wished  for  news.' 

She  smiled  involuntarily.  It  seemed  to  her  she  had 
expected  this  in  some  sort  all  along.  But  her  self-possession 
was  complete. 

'  The  excited  state  may  be  over  in  a  short  time  now,'  she 
answered  him  in  a  quiet  whisper ;  '  but  at  present  it  is  at  its 
height.  It  seemed  to  please  her ' — and  withdrawing  her  hand 
she  turned  to  John  Backhouse — '  when  I  suggested  that  I  should 
walk  up  to  Shanmoss  and  back.  I  said  I  would  come  back  to 
her  in  half  an  hour  or  so,  when  the  daylight  was  quite  gone,  and 
prove  to  her  there  was  nothing  on  the  path.' 

A  hand  caught  her  arm.  It  was  Mrs.  Irwin,  holding  the  door 
close  with  the  other  hand. 

'  Miss  Leyburn — Miss  Catherine  !  Yur  not  gawin'  oot — not 
gawin'  oop  that  path?'  The  woman  was  fond  of  Catherine,  and 
looked  deadly  frightened. 

'  Yes,  I  am,  Mrs.  Irwin — but  I  shall  be  back  very  soon.  Don't 
leave  her  ;  go  back.'  And  Catherine  motioned  her  back  with  a 
little  peremptory  gesture. 


CHAP,  x  WESTMORELAND  141 

'  Doan't  ye  let  'ur,  sir,'  said  the  woman  excitedly  to  Robert. 
'  One's  eneuf  aa'm  thinking.'  And  she  pointed  with  a  meaning 
gesture  to  the  room  behind  her. 

Robert  looked  at  Catherine,  who  was  moving  towards  the 
outer  door. 

'  I'll  go  with  her,'  he  said  hastily,  his  face  lighting  up.  '  There 
is  nothing  whatever  to  be  afraid  of,  only  don't  leave  your 
patient.' 

Catherine  trembled  as  she  heard  the  words,  but  she  made  no 
sign,  and  the  two  men  and  the  woman  watched  their  departure 
with  blank  uneasy  wonderment.  A  second  later  they  were  on 
the  fell-side  climbing  a  rough  stony  path,  which  in  places  was 
almost  a  watercourse,  and  which  wound  up  the  fell  towards  a 
tract  of  level  swampy  moss  or  heath,  beyond  which  lay  the 
descent  to  Shanmoor.  Daylight  was  almost  gone ;  the  stormy 
yellow  west  was  being  fast  swallowed  up  in  cloud ;  below  them 
as  they  climbed  lay  the  dark  group  of  houses,  with  a  light 
twinkling  here  and  there.  All  about  them  were  black  mountain 
forms ;  a  desolate  tempestuous  wind  drove  a  gusty  rain  into 
their  faces ;  a  little  beck  roared  beside  them,  and  in  the 
distance  from  the  black  gulf  of  the  valley  the  swollen  river 
thundered. 

Elsmere  looked  down  on  his  companion  with  an  indescribable 
exultation,  a  passionate  sense  of  possession  which  could  hardly 
restrain  itself.  He  had  come  back  that  morning  with  a  mind 
clearly  made  up.  Catherine  had  been  blind  indeed  when  she 
supposed  that  any  plan  of  his  or  hers  would  have  been  allowed 
to  stand  in  the  way  of  that  last  wrestle  with  her,  of  which  he 
had  planned  all  the  methods,  rehearsed  all  the  arguments.  But 
when  he  reached  the  vicarage  he  was  greeted  with  the  news  of 
her  absence.  She  was  inaccessible  it  appeared  for  the  day.  No 
matter  !  The  vicar  and  he  settled  in  the  fewest  possible  words 
that  he  should  stay  till  Monday,  Mrs.  Thornburgh  meanwhile 
looking  on,  saying  what  civility  demanded,  and  surprisingly 
little  else.  Then  in  the  evening  Mrs.  Thornburgh  had  asked  of 
him  with  a  manner  of  admirable  indifference  whether  he  felt 
inclined  for  an  evening  walk  to  High  Ghyll  to  inquire  after 
Mary  Backhouse.  The  request  fell  in  excellently  with  a  lover's 
restlessness,  and  Robert  assented  at  once.  The  vicar  saw  him 
go  with  puzzled  brows  and  a  quick  look  at  his  wife,  whose  head 
was  bent  close  over  her  worsted  work. 

It  never  occurred  to  Elsmere — or  if  it  did  occur,  he  pooh- 
poohed  the  notion — that  he  should  find  Catherine  still  at  her 
post  far  from  home  on  this  dark  stormy  evening.  But  in  the 
glow  of  joy  which  her  presence  had  brought  him  he  was  still 
capable  of  all  sorts  of  delicate  perceptions  and  reasonings.  His 
quick  imagination  carried  him  through  the  scene  from  which 
she  had  just  momentarily  escaped.  He  had  understood  the 
exaltation  of  her  look  and  tone.  If  love  spoke  at  all,  ringed 
with  such  surroundings,  it  must  be  with  its  most  inward  and 


142  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

spiritual  voice,  as  those  speak  who  feel  '  the  Eternities '  about 
them. 

But  the  darkness  hid  her  from  him  so  well  that  he  had  to 
feel  out  the  situation  for  himself.  He  could  not  trace  it  in  her 
face. 

'  We  must  go  right  up  to  the  top  of  the  pass,'  she  said  to  him 
as  he  held  a  gate  open  for  her  which  led  them  into  a  piece  of 
larch  plantation  on  the  mountain-side.  '  The  ghost  is  supposed 
to  walk  along  this  bit  of  road  above  the  houses,  till  it  reaches 
the  heath  on  the  top,  and  then  it  turns  towards  Bleacliff  Tarn, 
which  lies  higher  up  to  the  right,  under  High  Fell.' 

'  Do  you  imagine  your  report  will  have  any  effect  ? ' 

'  At  any  rate,'  she  said  sighing, '  it  seemed  to  me  that  it  might 
divert  her  thoughts  a  little  from  the  actual  horror  of  her  own 
summons.  Anything  is  better  than  the  torture  of  that  one  fixed 
idea  as  she  lies  there.' 

'  What  is  that  ? '  said  Robert,  startled  a  little  by  some  ghostly 
sounds  in  front  of  them.  The  little  wood  was  almost  dark,  and 
he  could  see  nothing. 

'  Only  a  horse  trotting  on  in  front  of  us,'  said  Catherine ; 
'  our  voices  frightened  him,  I  suppose.  We  shall  be  out  on  the 
fell  again  directly.' 

And  as  they  quitted  the  trees,  a  dark  bulky  form  to  the  left 
suddenly  lifted  a  shadowy  head  from  the  grass,  and  clattered 
down  the  slope. 

A  cluster  of  white -stemmed  birches  just  ahead  of  them 
caught  whatever  light  was  still  left  in  the  atmosphere,  their 
feathery  tops  bending  and  swaying  against  the  sky. 

'  How  easily,  with  mind  attuned,  one  could  people  this  whole 
path  with  ghosts  ! '  said  Robert.  '  Look  at  those  stems,  and 
that  line  of  stream  coming  down  to  the  right,  and  listen  to  the 
wind  among  the  fern.' 

For  they  were  passing  a  little  gully  deep  in  bracken,  up 
which  the  blast  was  tearing  its  tempestuous  way. 

Catherine  shivered  a  little,  and  the  sense  of  physical  exhaus- 
tion, which  had  been  banished  like  everything  else — doubt, 
humiliation,  bitterness — by  the  one  fact  of  his  presence,  came 
back  on  her. 

'  There  is  something  rather  awful  in  this  dark  and  storm,'  she 
said,  and  paused. 

'  Would  you  have  faced  it  alone  ? '  he  asked,  his  voice  thrilling 
her  with  a  hundred  different  meanings.  '  I  am  glad  I  prevented 
it.' 

'  I  have  no  fear  of  the  mountains,'  she  said,  trembling.  '  I 
know  them,  and  they  me.' 

'  But  you  are  tired — your  voice  is  tired — and  the  walk  might 
have  been  more  of  an  effort  than  you  thought  it.  Do  you  never 
think  of  yourself  1 ' 

'  Oh  dear,  yes,'  said  Catherine,  trying  to  smile,  and  could  find 
nothing  else  to  say.  They  walked  on  a  few  moments  in  silence, 


CHAP,  x  WESTMORELAND  143 

splashes  of  rain  breaking  in  their  faces.  Robert's  inward  ex- 
citement was  growing  fast.  Suddenly  Catherine's  pulse  stood 
still.  She  felt  her  hand  lifted,  drawn  within  his  arm,  covered 
close  with  his  warm  trembling  clasp. 

'  Catherine,  let  it  stay  there.  Listen  one  moment.  You  gave 
me  a  hard  lesson  yesterday,  too  hard — I  cannot  learn  it-^-I  am 
bold — I  claim  you.  Be  my  wife.  Help  me  through  this  difficult 
world.  I  have  loved  you  from  the  first  moment.  Come  to  me. 
Be  kind  to  me.' 

She  could  hardly  see  his  face,  but  she  could  feel  the  passion 
in  his  voice  and  touch.  Her  cheek  seemed  to  droop  against  his 
arm.  He  felt  her  tottering. 

'  Let  me  sit  down,'  she  said  ;  and  after  one  moment  of  dizzy 
silence  he  guided  her  to  a  rock,  sinking  down  himself  beside 
her,  longing,  but  not  daring,  to  shelter  her  under  his  broad 
Inverness  cloak  against  the  storm. 

'  I  told  you,'  she  said,  almost  whispering,  '  that  I  was  bound, 
tied  to  others.' 

'  I  do  not  admit  your  plea,'  he  said  passionately  ;  '  no,  not  for 
a  moment.  For  two  days  have  I  been  tramping  over  the  moun- 
tains thinking  it  out  for  yourself  and  me.  Catherine,  your 
mother  has  no  son — she  should  find  one  in  me.  I  have  no  sisters 
— give  me  yours.  I  will  cherish  them  as  any  brother  could. 
Come  and  enrich  my  life  ;  you  shall  still  fill  and  shelter  theirs. 
I  dare  not  think  what  my  future  might  be  with  you  to  guide, 
to  inspire,  to  bless — dare  not,  lest  with  a  word  you  should 
plunge  me  into  an  outer  darkness  I  cannot  face.' 

He  caught  her  unresisting  hand,  and  raised  it  to  his  lips. 

'  Is  there  no  sacredness,'  he  said  brokenly,  '  in  the  fate  that 
has  brought  us  together — out  of  all  the  world — here  in  this 
lonely  valley  ?  Come  to  me,  Catherine.  You  shall  never  .fail 
the  old  ties,  I  promise  you  ;  and  new  hands  shall  cling  to  you — 
new  voices  shall  call  you  blessed.' 

Catherine  could  hardly  breathe.  Every  word  had  been  like 
balm  upon  a  wound — like  a  ray  of  intense  light  in  the  gloom 
about  them.  Oh,  where  was  this  softness  bearing  her— this 
emptiness  of  all  will,  of  all  individual  power  ?  She  hid  her  eyes 
with  her  other  hand,  struggling  to  recall  that  far  away[moment 
in  Marrisdale.  But  the  mind  refused  to  work.  Consciousness 
seemed  to  retain  nothing  but  the  warm  grasp  of  his  hand — the 
tones  of  his  voice. 

He  saw  her  struggle,  and  pressed  on  remorselessly. 

'Speak  to  me — say  one  little  kind  word.  Oh,  you  cannot 
send  me  away  miserable  and  empty  ! ' 

She  turned  to  him,  and  laid  her  trembling  free  hand  on  his 
arm.  He  clasped  them  both  with  rapture. 

'  Give  me  a  little  time.' 

'  No,  no,'  he  said,  and  it  almost  seemed  to  her  that  he  was 
smiling  :  '  time  for  you  to  escape  me  again,  my  wild  mountain 
bird  ;  time  for  you  to  think  yourself  and  me  into  all  sorts  of 


144  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

moral  mists  !  No,  you  shall  not  have  it.  Here,  alone  with  God 
and  the  dark — bless  me  or  undo  me.  Send  me  out  to  the  work 
of  life  maimed  and  sorrowful,  or  send  me  out  your  knight,  your 
possession,  pledged 

But  his  voice  failed  him.  What  a  note  of  youth,  of  imagina- 
tion, of  impulsive  eagerness  there  was  through  it  all !  The  more 
slowly -moving  inarticulate  nature  was  swept  away  by  it.  There 
was  but  one  object  clear  to  her  in  the  whole  world  of  thought 
or  sense,  everything  else  had  sunk  out  of  sight — drowned  in  a 
luminous  mist. 

He  rose  and  stood  before  her  as  he  delivered  his  ultimatum, 
his  tall  form  drawn  up  to  its  full  height.  In  the  east,  across 
the  valley,  above  the  farther  buttress  of  High  Fell,  there  was  a 
clearer  strip  of  sky,  visible  for  a  moment  among  the  moving 
storm  clouds,  and  a  dim  haloed  moon  shone  out  in  it.  Far  away 
a  white-walled  cottage  glimmered  against  the  fell ;  the  pools  at 
their  feet  shone  in  the  weird  passing  light. 

She  lifted  her  head,  and  looked  at  him,  still  irresolute.  Then 
she  too  rose,  and  helplessly,  like  some  one  impelled  by  a  will 
not  her  own,  she  silently  held  out  to  him  two  white  trembling 
hands. 

'  Catherine — my  angel — my  wife  ! ' 

There  was  something  in  the  pale  virginal  grace  of  look  and 
form  which  kept  his  young  passion  in  awe.  But  he  bent  his 
head  again  over  those  yielded  hands,  kissing  them  with  dizzy 
unspeakable  joy. 

About  twenty  minutes  later  Catherine  and  Robert,  having 
hurried  back  with  all  speed  from  the  top  of  Shanmoss,  reached 
the  farmhouse  door.  She  knocked.  No  one  answered.  She 
tried  the  lock  ;  it  yielded,  and  they  entered.  No  one  in  the 
kitchen.  She  looked  disturbed  and  conscience-stricken. 

'  Oh ! '  she  cried  to  him,  under  her  breath ;  '  have  we  been 
too  long?'  And  hurrying  into  the  inner  room  she  left  him 
waiting. 

Inside  was  a  mournful  sight.  The  two  men  and  Mrs.  Irwin 
stood  close  round  the  settle,  but  as  she  came  nearer,  Catherine 
saw  Mary  Backhouse  lying  panting  on  her  pillows,  her  breath 
coming  in  loud  gasps,  her  dress  and  all  the  coverings  of  the  bed 
showing  signs  of  disorder  and  confusion,  her  black  hair  tossed 
about  her. 

'It's  bin  awfu'  work  sence  you  left,  miss,'  whispered  Mrs. 
Irwin  to  Catherine  excitedly,  as  she  joined  them.  'She  thowt 
she  heerd  soombody  fleytin'  and  callin' — it  was  t'  wind  came 
skirlin'  round  t'  place,  an'  she  aV  but  thrown  hirsel'  oot  o'  t' 
bed,  an'  aa  shooted  for  Jim,  and  they  came,  and  they  and  I — 
it's  bin  as  much  as  we  could  a'  du  to  hod  'er.' 

'  Luke  !     Steady  ! '  exclaimed  Jim.     '  She'll  try  it  again.' 

For  the  hands  were  moving  restlessly  from  side  to  side,  and 
the  face  was  working  again.  There  was  one  more  desperate 


CHAP,  x  WESTMORELAND  145 

effort  to  rise,  which  the  two  men  checked — gently  enough,  but 
effectually — and  then  the  exhaustion  seemed  complete.  The 
lids  fell,  and  the  struggle  for  breath  was  pitiful. 

Catherine  flew  for  some  drugs  which  the  doctor  had  left,  and 
shown  her  how  to  use.  After  some  twenty  minutes  they  seemed 
to  give  relief,  and  the  great  haunted  eyes  opened  once  more. 

Catherine  held  barley-water  to  the  parched  lips,  and  Mary 
drank  mechanically,  her  gaze  still  intently  fixed  on  her  nurse. 
When  Catherine  put  down  the  glass  the  eyes  followed  her  with 
a  question  which  the  lips  had  no  power  to  frame. 

Leave  her  now  a  little,'  said  Catherine  to  the  others.  '  The 
fewer  people  and  the  more  air  the  better.  And  please  let  the 
door  be  open  ;  the  room  is  too  hot.' 

They  went  out  silently,  and  Catherine  sank  down  beside  the 
bed.  Her  heart  went  out  in  unspeakable  longing  towards  the 
poor  human  wreck  before  her.  For  her  there  was  no  morrow 
possible,  no  dawn  of  other  and  softer  skies.  All  was  over :  life 
was  lived,  and  all  its  heavenly  capabilities  missed  for  ever. 
Catherine  felt  her  own  joy  hurt  her,  and  her  tears  fell  fast. 

'  Mary,'  she  said,  laying  her  face  close  beside  the  chill  face  on 
the  pillow,  '  Mary,  I  went  out ;  I  climbed  all  the  path  as  far  as 
Shanmoss.  There  was  nothing  evil  there.  Oh,  I  must  tell  you  ! 
Can  I  make  you  understand  ?  I  want  you  to  feel  that  it  is  only 
God  and  love  that  are  real.  Oh,  think  of  them !  He  would 
not  let  you  be  hurt  and  terrified  in  your  pain,  poor  Mary.  He 
loves  you.  He  is  waiting  to  comfort  you — to  set  you  free  from 
pain  for  ever  ;  and  He  has  sent  you  a  sign  by  me.'  .  .  .  She 
lifted  her  head  from  the  pillow,  trembling  and  hesitating.  Still 
that  feverish  questioning  gaze  on  the  face  beneath  her,  as  it  lay 
in  deep  shadow  cast  by  a  light  on  the  window-sill  some  paces 
away. 

'  You  sent  me  out,  Mary,  to  search  for  something,  the  thought 
of  which  has  been  tormenting  and  torturing  you.  You  thought 
God  would  let  a  dark  lost  spirit  trouble  you  and  take  you  away 
from  Him — you,  His  child,  whom  He  made  and  whom  He  loves  ! 
And  listen !  While  you  thought  you  were  sending  me  out  to 
face  the  evil  thing,  you  were  really  my  kind  angel — God's 
messenger — sending  me  to  meet  the  joy  of  my  whole  life  ! 

'There  was  some  one  waiting  here  just  now,'  she  went  on 
hurriedly,  breathing  her  sobbing  words  into  Mary's  ear.  '  Some 
one  who  has  loved  me,  and  whom  I  love.  But  I  had  made  him 
sad,  and  myself  ;  then  when  you  sent  me  out  he  came  too  :  we 
walked  up  that  path,  you  remember,  beyond  the  larchwooa,  up 
to  the  top,  where  the  stream  goes  under  the  road.  And  there 
he  spoke  to  me2  and  I  couldn  t  help  it  any  more.  And  I  pro- 
mised to  love  him  and  be  his  wife.  And  if  it  hadn't  been  for 
you,  Mary,  it  would  never  have  happened.  God  had  put  it  into 
your  hand,  this  joy,  and  I  bless  you  for  it !  Oh,  and  Mary — Mary 
— it  is  only  for  a  little  little  while  this  life  of  ours !  Nothing 
matters — not  our  worst  sin  and  sorrow — but  God,  and  our  love 

L 


146  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  i 

to  Him.  I  shall  meet  you  some  day — I  pray  I  may — in  His 
sight  and  all  will  be  well,  the  pain  all  forgotten — all ! ' 

She  raised  herself  again  and  looked  down  with  yearning 
passionate  pity  on  the  shadowed  form.  Oh,  blessed  answer 
of  heart  to  heart !  There  were  tears  forming  under  the  heavy 
lids,  the  corners  of  the  lips  were  relaxed  and  soft.  Slowly  the 
feeble  hand  sought  her  own.  She  waited  in  an  intense  expec- 
tant silence. 

There  was  a  faint  breathing  from  the  lips  ;  she  stooped  and 
caught  it. 

'  Kiss  me  ! '  said  the  whisper  ;  and  she  laid  her  soft  fresh  lips 
to  the  parched  mouth  of  the  dying.  When  she  lifted  her  head 
again  Mary  still  held  her  hand ;  Catherine  softly  stretched  out 
hers  for  the  opiate  Dr.  Baker  had  left ;  it  was  swallowed  without 
resistance,  and  a  quiet  to  which  the  invalid  had  been  a  stranger 
for  days  stole  little  by  little  over  the  wasted  frame.  The  grasp 
of  the  fingers  relaxed,  the  laboured  breath  came  more  gently, 
and  in  a  few  more  minutes  she  slept.  Twilight  was  long  over. 
The  ghost-hour  was  past,  and  the  moon  outside  was  slowly 
gaining  a  wider  empire  in  the  clearing  heavens. 

It  was  a  little  after  ten  o'clock  when  Rose  drew  aside  the 
curtain  at  Burwood  and  looked  out. 

'There  is  the  lantern,'  she  said  to  Agnes,  'just  by  the  vicar- 
age. How  the  night  has  cleared  ! ' 

She  turned  back  to  her  book.  Agnes  was  writing  letters. 
Mrs.  Leyburn  was  sitting  by  the  bit  of  fire  that  was  generally 
lit  for  her  benefit  in  the  evenings,  her  white  shawl  dropping 
gracefully  about  her,  a  copy  of  the  Comhill  on  her  lap.  But 
she  was  not  reading,  she  was  meditating,  and  the  girls  thought 
her  out  of  spirits.  The  hall  door  opened. 

'  There  is  some  one  with  Catherine  ! '  cried  Rose,  starting  up. 
Agnes  suspended  her  letter. 

'  Perhaps  the  vicar,'  said  Mrs.  Leyburn,  with  a  little  sigh. 

A  hand  turned  the  drawing-room  door,  and  in  the  doorway 
stood  Elsmere.  Rose  caught  a  gray  dress  disappearing  up  the 
little  stairs  behind  him. 

Elsmere's  look  was  enough  for  the  two  girls.  They  under- 
stood in  an  instant.  Rose  flushed  all  over.  The  first  contact 
with  love  is  intoxicating  to  any  girl  of  eighteen,  even  though 
the  romance  be  not  hers.  But  Mrs.  Leyburn  sat  bewildered. 

Elsmere  went  up  to  her,  stooped  and  took  her  hand. 

'Will  you  give  her  to  me,  Mrs.  Leyburn?'  he  said,  his  boyish 
looks  aglow,  his  voice  unsteady.  '  Will  you  let  me  be  a  son  to 
you?' 

Mrs.  Leyburn  rose.  He  still  held  her  hand.  She  looked  up 
at  him  helplessly. 

'Oh,  Mr.  Elsmere,  where  is  Catherine?' 

'  I  brought  her  home,'  he  said  gently.  '  She  is  mine,  if  you 
will  it.  Give  her  to  me  again  !' 


CHAP,  x  WESTMORELAND  147 

Mrs.  Leyburn's  face  worked  pitifully.  The  rectory  and  the 
wedding  dress,  which  had  lingered  so  regretfully  in  her  thoughts 
since  her  last  sight  of  Catherine,  sank  out  of  them  altogether. 

'  She  has  been  everything  in  the  world  to  us,  Mr.  Elsmere.' 

'  I  know  she  has,'  he  said  simply.  '  She  shall  be  everything 
in  the  world  to  you  still.  I  have  had  hard  work  to  persuade 
her.  There  will  be  no  chance  for  me  if  you  don't  help  me.' 

Another  breathless  pause.  Then  Mrs.  Ley  burn  timidly 
drew  him  to  her,  and  he  stooped  his  tall  head  and  kissed  her 
like  a  son. 

'Oh,  I  must  go  to  Catherine  !'  she  said,  hurrying  away,  her 
pretty  withered  cheeks  wet  with  tears. 

Then  the  girls  threw  themselves  on  Elsmere.  The  talk  was 
all  animation  and  excitement  for  the  moment,  not  a  tragic 
touch  in  it.  It  was  as  well  perhaps  that  Catherine  was  not 
there  to  hear ! 

'  I  give  you  fair  warning,'  said  Rose,  as  she  bade  him  good- 
night, '  that  I  don't  know  how  to  behave  to  a  brother.  And  I 
am  equally  sure  that  Mrs.  Thornburgh  doesn't  know  how  to 
behave  to  &Jianc&' 

Robert  threw  up  his  arms  in  mock  terror  at  the  name,  and 
departed. 

'We  are  abandoned,'  cried  Rose,  flinging  herself  into  the 
chair  again — then  with  a  little  flash  of  half  irresolute  wicked- 
ness— '  and  we  are  free  !  Oh,  I  hope  she  will  be  happy !' 

And  she  caught  Agnes  wildly  round  the  neck  as  though  she 
would  drown  her  first  words  in  her  last. 

'  Madcap  ! '  cried  Agnes,  struggling.  '  Leave  me  at  least  a 
little  breath  to  wish  Catherine  joy !' 

And  they  both  fled  upstairs. 

There  was  indeed  no  prouder  woman  in  the  three  kingdoms 
than  Mjs.  Thornburgh  that  night.  After  all  the  agitation 
downstairs  she  could  not  persuade  herself  to  go  to  bed.  She 
first  knocked  up  Sarah  and  communicated  the  news ;  then  she 
sat  down  before  a  pier-glass  in  her  own  room  studying  the  person 
who  had  found  Catherine  Leyburn  a  husband. 

'  My  doing  from  beginning  to  end,'  she  cried  with  a  triumph 
beyond  words.  '  William  has  had  nothing  to  do  with  it.  Robert 
has  had  scarcely  as  much.  And  to  think  how  little  I  dreamt  of 
it  when  I  began  !  Well,  to  be  sure,  no  one  could  have  planned 
marrying  those  two.  There's  no  one  but  Providence  could  have 
foreseen  it — they're  so  different.  And  after  all  it's  done.  Now 
then,  whom  shall  I  have  next  year  ?' 


BOOK  II 

SUEKEY 


CHAPTER  XI 

FAREWELL  to  the  mountains  ! 

The  scene  in  which  the  next  act  of  this  unpretending  history 
is  to  run  its  course  is  of  a  very  different  kind.  In  place  of  the 
rugged  northern  nature — a  nature  wild  and  solitary  indeed,  but 
still  rich,  luxuriant,  and  friendly  to  the  senses  of  the  traveller, 
even  in  its  loneliest  places.  The  heaths  and  woods  of  some 
districts  of  Surrey  are  scarcely  more  thickly  peopled  than  the 
fells  of  Westmoreland  ;  the  walker  may  wander  for  miles,  and 
still  enjoy  an  untamed  primitive  earth,  guiltless  of  boundary  or 
furrow,  the  undisturbed  home  of  all  that  grows  and  flies,  where 
the  rabbits,  the  lizards,  and  the  birds  five  their  life  as  they 
please,  either  ignorant  of  intruding  man  or  strangely  little 
incommoded  by  his  neighbourhood.  And  yet  there  is  nothing 
forbidding  or  austere  in  these  wide  solitudes.  The  patches  of 
graceful  birch -wood;  the  miniature  lakes  nestling  among 
them ;  the  brakes  of  ling — pink,  faintly  scented,  a  feast  for 
every  sense ;  the  stretches  of  purple  heather,  glowing  into 
scarlet  under  the  touch  of  the  sun ;  the  scattered  farm-houses, 
so  mellow  in  colour,  so  pleasant  in  outline ;  the  general  softness 
and  lavishness  of  the  earth  and  all  it  bears,  make  these  Surrey 
commons  not  a  wilderness  but  a  paradise.  Nature,  indeed,  here 
is  like  some  spoilt  petulant  child.  She  will  bring  forth  nothing, 
or  almost  nothing,  for  man's  grosser  needs.  Ask  her  to  bear 
corn  or  pasture  flocks,  and  she  will  be  miserly  and  grudging. 
But  ask  her  only  to  be  beautiful,  enticing,  capriciously  lovely, 
and  she  will  throw  herself  into  the  task  with  all  the  abandon- 
ment, all  the  energy,  that  heart  could  wish. 

It  is  on  the  borders  of  one  of  the  wilder  districts  of  a  county, 
which  is  throughout  a  strange  mixture  of  suburbanism  and  the 
desert,  that  we  next  meet  with  Robert  and  Catherine  Elsmere. 
The  rectory  of  Murewell  occupied  the  highest  point  of  a  gentle 
swell  of  ground  which  sloped  through  cornfields  and  woods  to  a 
plain  of  boundless  heather  on  the  south,  and  climbed  away  on 
the  north  towards  the  long  chalk  ridge  of  the  Hog's  Back.  It 
was  a  square  white  house  pretending  neither  to  beauty  nor 
state,  a  little  awkwardly  and  barely  placed,  with  only  a  small 
stretch  of  grass  and  a  low  hedge  between  it  and  the  road.  A 


152  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  u 

few  tall  firs  climbing  above  the  roof  gave  a  little  grace  and 
clothing  to  its  southern  side,  and  behind  it  there  was  a  garden 
sloping  softly  down  towards  the  village  at  its  foot — a  garden 
chiefly  noticeable  for  its  grass  walks,  the  luxuriance  of  the  fruit 
trees  clinging  to  its  old  red  walls,  and  the  masses  of  pink  and 
white  phloxes  which  now  in  August  gave  it  the  floweriness  and 
the  gaiety  of  an  Elizabethan  song.  Below  in  the  hollow  and  to 
the  right  lay  the  picturesque  medley  of  the  village — roofs  and 
gables  and  chimneys,  yellow-gray  thatch,  shining  whitewash, 
and  mellowed  brick,  making  a  bright  patchwork  among  the 
softening  trees,  thin  wreaths  of  blue  smoke,  like  airy  ribbons, 
tangled  through  it  all.  Rising  over  the  rest  was  a  house  of 
some  dignity.  It  had  been  an  old  manor-house,  now  it  was  half 
ruinous  and  the  village  inn.  Some  generations  back  the  squire 
of  the  day  had  dismantled  it,  jealous  that  so  big  a  house  should 
exist  in  the  same  parish  as  the  Hall,  and  the  spoils  of  it  had 
furnished  the  rectory ;  so  that  the  homely  house  was  fitted 
inside  with  mahogany  doors  and  carved  cupboard  fronts,  in 
which  Robert  delighted,  and  in  which  even  Catherine  felt  a 
proprietary  pleasure. 

Altogether  a  quiet,  rural,  English  spot.  If  the  house  had  no 
beauty,  it  commanded  a  world  of  loveliness.  All  around  it — - 
north,  south,  and  west — there  spread,  as  it  were,  a  vast  play- 
ground of  heather  and  wood  and  grassy  common,  in  which  the 
few  workaday  patches  of  hedge  and  ploughed  land  seemed 
ingulfed  and  lost.  Close  under  the  rectory  windows,  however, 
was  a  vast  sloping  cornfield,  belonging  to  the  glebe,  the  largest 
and  fruitfulest  of  the  neighbourhood.  At  the  present  moment 
it  was  just  ready  for  the  reaper — the  golden  ears  had  clearly 
but  a  few  more  days  or  hours  to  ripple  in  the  sun.  It  was 
bounded  by  a  dark  summer-scorched  belt  of  wood,  and  beyond, 
over  the  distance,  rose  a  blue  pointed  hill,  which  seemed  to  be 
there  only  to  attract  and  make  a  centre  for  the  sunsets. 

As  compared  with  her  Westmoreland  life,  the  first  twelve 
months  of  wifehood  had  been  to  Catherine  Elsmere  a  time  of 
rapid  and  changing  experience.  A  few  days  out  of  their  honey- 
moon had  been  spent  at  Oxford.  It  was  a  week  before  the 
opening  of  the  October  term,  but  many  of  the  senior  members 
of  the  University  were  already  in  residence,  and  the  stagnation 
of  the  Long  Vacation  was  over.  Langham  was  up  ;  so  was  Mr. 
Grey,  and  many  another  old  friend  of  Robert's.  The  bride  and 
bridegroom  were  much  feted  in  a  quiet  way.  They  dined  in 
many  common  rooms  and  bursaries  ;  they  were  invited  to  many 
luncheons,  whereat  the  superabundance  of  food  and  the  length 
of  time  spent  upon  it  made  the  Puritan  Catherine  uncomfort- 
able ;  and  Langham  devoted  himself  to  taking  the  wife  through 
colleges  and  gardens,  Schools  and  Bodleian,  in  most  orthodox 
fashion,  indemnifying  himself  afterwards  for  the  sense  of  con- 
straint her  presence  imposed  upon  him  by  a  talk  and  a  smoke 
with  Robert. 


CHAP,  xi  SURREY  153 

He  could  not  understand  the  Elsmere  marriage.  That  a 
creature  so  mobile,  so  sensitive,  so  susceptible  as  Elsmere  should 
have  fallen  in  love  with  this  stately  silent  woman,  with  her 
very  evident  rigidities  of  thought  and  training,  was  only  another 
illustration  of  the  mysteries  of  matrimony.  He  could  not  get 
on  with  her,  and  after  a  while  did  not  try  to  do  so. 

There  could  be  no  doubt  as  to  Elsmere's  devotion.  He  was 
absorbed,  wrapped  up  in  her. 

'  She  has  affected  him,'  thought  the  tutor,  '  at  a  period  of  life 
when  he  is  more  struck  by  the  difficulty  of  being  morally  strong 
than  by  the  difficulty  of  being  intellectually  clear.  The  touch 
of  religious  genius  in  her  braces  him  like  the  breath  of  an  Alpine 
wind.  One  can  see  him  expanding,  glowing  under  it.  £ien  ! 
sooner  he  than  I.  To  be  fair,  however,  let  me  remember  that 
she  decidedly  does  not  like  me — which  may  cut  me  off  from 
Elsmere.  However ' — and  Langham  sighed  over  his  fire — '  what 
have  he  and  I  to  do  with  one  another  in  the  future  ?  By  all  the 
laws  of  character  something  untoward  might  come  out  of  this 
marriage.  But  she  will  mould  him,  rather  than  he  her.  Besides, 
she  will  have  children — and  that  solves  most  things.' 

Meanwhile,  if  Langham  dissected  the  bride  as  he  dissected 
most  people,  Robert,  with  that  keen  observation  which  lay 
hidden  somewhere  under  his  careless  boyish  ways,  noticed  many 
points  of  change  about  his  old  friend.  Langham  seemed  to  him 
less  human,  more  strange,  than  ever ;  the  points  of  contact 
between  him  and  active  life  were  lessening  in  number  term  by 
term.  He  lectured  only  so  far  as  was  absolutely  necessary  for 
the  retention  of  his  post,  and  he  spoke  with  wholesale  distaste 
of  his  pupils.  He  had  set  up  a  book  on  '  The  Schools  of  Athens,' 
but  when  Robert  saw  the  piles  of  disconnected  notes  already 
accumulated,  he  perfectly  understood  that  the  book  was  a  mere 
blind,  a  screen,  behind  which  a  difficult  fastidious  nature  trifled 
and  procrastinated  as  it  pleased. 

Again,  when  Elsmere  was  an  undergraduate  Langham  and 
Grey  had  been  intimate.  Now,  Langham's  tone  apropos  of 
Grey's  politics  and  Grey's  dreams  of  Church  Reform  was  as 
languidly  sarcastic  as  it  was  with  regard  to  most  of  the  strenu- 
ous things  of  life.  'Nothing  particular  is  true,'  his  manner 
said,  '  and  all  action  is  a  degrading  pis-aller.  Get  through  the 
day  somehow,  with  as  little  harm  to  yourself  and  other  people 
as  may  be  ;  do  your  duty  if  you  like  it,  but,  for  heaven's  sake, 
don't  cant  about  it  to  other  people  ! ' 

If  the  affinities  of  character  count  for  much,  Catherine  and 
Henry  Grey  should  certainly  have  understood  each  other.  The 
tutor  liked  the  look  of  Elsmere's  wife.  His  kindly  brown  eyes 
rested  on  her  with  pleasure ;  he  tried  in  his  shy  but  friendly 
way  to  get  at  her,  and  there  was  in  both  of  them  a  touch  of 
homeliness,  a  sheer  power  of  unworldliness  that  should  have 
drawn  them  together.  And  indeed  Catherine  felt  the  charm, 
the  spell  of  this  born  leader  of  men.  But  she  watched  him  with 


154  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

a  sort  of  troubled  admiration,  puzzled,  evidently,  by  the  halo  of 
moral  dignity  surrounding  him,  which  contended  with  something 
else  in  her  mind  respecting  him.  Some  words  of  Robert's, 
uttered  very  early  in  their  acquaintance,  had  set  her  on  her 
guard.  Speaking  of  religion,  Robert  had  said,  '  Grey  is  not  one 
of  us ' ;  and  Catherine,  restrained  by  a  hundred  ties  of  training 
and  temperament,  would  not  surrender  herself,  and  could  not  if 
she  would. 

Then  had  followed  their  home-coming  to  the  rectory,  and  that 
first  institution  of  their  common  life,  never  to  be  forgotten  for 
the  tenderness  and  the  sacredness  of  it.  Mrs.  Elsmere  had 
received  them,  and  had  then  retired  to  a  little  cottage  of  her 
own  close  by.  She  had  of  course  already  made  the  acquaintance 
of  her  daughter-in-law,  for  she  had  been  the  Thornburghs'  guest 
for  ten  days  before  the  marriage  in  September,  and  Catherine, 
moreover,  had  paid  her  a  short  visit  earlier  in  the  summer. 
But  it  was  now  that  for  the  first  time  she  realised  to  the  full 
the  character  of  the  woman  Robert  had  married.  Catherine's 
manner  to  her  was  sweetness  itself.  Parted  from  her  own 
mother  as  she  was,  the  younger  woman's  strong  filial  instincts 
spent  themselves  in  tending  the  mother  who  had  been  the 
guardian  and  life  of  Robert's  youth.  And  Mrs.  Elsmere  in 
return  was  awed  by  Catherine's  moral  force  and  purity  of 
nature,  and  proud  of  her  personal  beauty,  which  was  so  real,  in 
spite  of  the  severity  of  the  type,  and  to  which  marriage  had 
given,  at  any  rate  for  the  moment,  a  certain  added  softness  and 
brilliancy. 

But  there  were  difficulties  in  the  way.  Catherine  was  a  little 
too  apt  to  treat  Mrs.  Elsmere  as  she  would  have  treated  her  own 
mother.  But  to  be  nursed  and  protected,  to  be  screened  from 
draughts,  and  run  after  with  shawls  and  stools  was  something 
wholly  new  and  intolerable  to  Mrs.  Elsmere.  She  could  not 
away  with  it,  and  as  soon  as  she  had  sufficiently  lost  her  first 
awe  of  her  daughter-in-law  she  would  revenge  herself  in  all 
sorts  of  droll  ways,  and  with  occasional  flashes  of  petulant 
Irish  wit  which  would  make  Catherine  colour  and  draw  back. 
Then  Mrs.  Elsmere,  touched  with  remorse,  would  catch  her  by 
the  neck  and  give  her  a  resounding  kiss,  which  perhaps  puzzled 
Catherine  no  less  than  her  sarcasm  of  a  minute  before. 

Moreover  Mrs.  Elsmere  felt  ruefully  from  the  first  that 
her  new  daughter  was  decidedly  deficient  in  the  sense  of 
humour. 

'  I  believe  it's  that  father  of  hers,'  she  would  say  to  herself 
crossly.  '  By  what  Robert  tells  me  of  him  he  must  have  been 
one  ot  the  people  who  get  ill  in  their  minds  for  want  of  a  good 
mouth-filling  laugh  now  and  then.  The  man  who  can't  amuse 
himself  a  bit  out  of  the  world  is  sure  to  get  his  head  addled 
somehow,  poor  creature.' 

Certainly  it  needed  a  faculty  of  laughter  to  be  always  able 
to  take  Mrs.  Elsmere  on  the  right  side.  For  instance,  Catherine 


CHAP,  xi  SURREY  155 

was  more  often  scandalised  than  impressed  by  her  mother-in- 
law's  charitable  performances. 

Mrs.  Elsmeres  little  cottage  was  filled  with  workhouse 
orphans  sent  to  her  from  different  London  districts.  The  train- 
ing of  these  girls  was  the  chief  business  of  her  life,  and  a  very 
odd  training  it  was,  conducted  in  the  noisiest  way  and  on  the 
most  familiar  terms.  It  was  undeniable  that  the  girls  generally 
did  well,  and  they  invariably  adored  Mrs.  Elsmere,  but  Catherine 
did  not  much  like  to  think  about  them.  Their  household  teach- 
ing under  Mrs.  Elsmere  and  her  old  servant  Martha — as  great 
an  original  as  herself — was  so  irregular,  their  religious  training 
so  extraordinary,  the  clothes  in  which  they  were  allowed  to 
disport  themselves  so  scandalous  to  the  sober  taste  of  the 
rector's  wife,  that  Catherine  involuntarily  regarded  the  little 
cottage  on  the  hill  as  a  spot  of  misrule  in  the  general  order  of 
the  parish.  She  would  go  in,  say,  at  eleven  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing, find  her  mother-in-law  in  bed,  half-dressed,  with  all  her 
handmaidens  about  her,  giving  her  orders,  reading  her  letters 
and  the  newspaper,  cutting  out  her  girls  frocks,  instructing 
them  in  the  fashions,  or  delivering  little  homilies  on  questions 
suggested  by  the  news  of  the  day  to  the  more  intelligent  of 
them.  The  room,  the  whole  house,  would  seem  to  Catherine  in 
a  detestable  litter.  If  so,  Mrs.  Elsmere  never  apologised  for  it. 
On  the  contrary,  as  she  saw  Catherine  sweep  a  mass  of  miscel- 
laneous debris  off  a  chair  in  search  of  a  seat,  the  small  bright 
eyes  would  twinkle  with  something  that  was  certainly  nearer 
amusement  than  shame. 

And  in  a  hundred  other  ways  Mrs.  Elsmere's  relations  with 
the  poor  of  the  parish  often  made  Catherine  miserable.  She 
herself  had  the  most  angelic  pity  and  tenderness  for  sorrows 
and  sinners ;  but  sin  was  sin  to  her,  and  when  she  saw  Mrs. 
Elsmere  more  than  half  attracted  by  the  stronger  vices,  and  in 
many  cases  more  inclined  to  laugh  with  what  was  human  in 
them  than  to  weep  over  what  was  vile,  Robert's  wife  would  go 
away  and  wrestle  with  herself,  that  she  might  be  betrayed  into 
nothing  harsh  towards  Robert's  mother. 

But  fate  allowed  their  differences,  whether  they  were  deep 
or  shallow,  no  time  to  develop.  A  week  of  bitter  cold  at  the 
beginning  of  January  struck  down  Mrs.  Elsmere,  whose  strange 
ways  of  living  were  more  the  result  of  certain  long-standing 
delicacies  of  health  than  she  had  ever  allowed  any  one  to  imagine. 
A  few  days  of  acute  inflammation  of  the  lungs,  borne  with  a 
patience  and  heroism  which  showed  the  Irish  character  at  its 
finest  —  a  moment  of  agonised  wrestling  with  that  terror  of 
death  which  had  haunted  the  keen  vivacious  soul  from  its 
earliest  consciousness,  ending  in  a  glow  of  spiritual  victory — 
and  Robert  found  himself  motherless.  He  and  Catherine  had 
never  left  her  since  the  beginning  of  the  illness.  In  one  of  the 
intervals  towards  the  end,  when  there  was  a  faint  power  of 
speech,  she  drew  Catherine's  cheek  down  to  her  and  kissed  her. 


156  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

'  God  bless  you  ! '  the  old  woman's  voice  said,  with  a  solemnity 
in  it  which  Robert  knew  well,  but  which  Catherine  had  never 
heard  before.  '  Be  good  to  him,  Catherine — be  always  good  to 
him!' 

And  she  lay  looking  from  the  husband  to  the  wife  Math  a 
certain  wistfulness  which  pained  Catherine,  she  knew  not  why. 
But  she  answered  with  tears  and  tender  words,  and  at  last  the 
mother's  face  settled  into  a  peace  which  death  did  but  confirm. 

This  great  and  unexpected  loss,  which  had  shaken  to  their 
depths  all  the  feelings  and  affections  of  his  youth,  had  thrown 
Elsmere  more  than  ever  on  his  wife.  To  him,  made  as  it  seemed 
for  love  and  for  enjoyment,  grief  was  a  novel  and  difficult 
burden.  He  felt  with  passionate  gratitude  that  his  wife  helped 
him  to  bear  it  so  that  he  came  out  from  it  not  lessened  but 
ennobled,  that  she  preserved  him  from  many  a  lapse  of  nervous 
weariness  and  irritation  into  which  his  temperament  might 
easily  have  been  betrayed. 

And  how  his  very  dependence  had  endeared  him  to  Catherine  ! 
That  vibrating  responsive  quality  in  him,  so  easily  mistaken 
for  mere  weakness,  which  made  her  so  necessary  to  him — there 
is  nothing  perhaps  which  wins  more  deeply  upon  a  woman. 
For  all  the  while  it  was  balanced  in  a  hundred  ways  by  the 
illimitable  respect  which  his  character  and  his  doings  compelled 
from  those  about  him.  To  be  the  strength,  the  inmost  joy  of  a 
man  who  within  the  conditions  of  his  life  seems  to  you  a  hero 
at  every  turn — there  is  no  happiness  more  penetrating  for  a 
wife  than  this. 

On  this  August  afternoon  the  Elsmeres  were  expecting  visi- 
tors. Catherine  had  sent  the  pony-carriage  to  the  station  to 
meet  Rose  and  Langham,  who  was  to  escort  her  from  Waterloo. 
For  various  reasons,  all  characteristic,  it  was  Rose's  first  visit 
to  Catherine's  new  home. 

Now  she  had  been  for  six  weeks  in  London,  and  had  been 
persuaded  to  come  on  to  her  sister,  at  the  end  of  her  stay. 
Catherine  was  looking  forward  to  her  coming  with  many 
tremors.  The  wild  ambitious  creature  had  been  not  one  atom 
appeased  by  Manchester  and  its  opportunities.  She  had  gone 
back  to  Whindale  in  April  only  to  fall  into  more  hopeless  dis- 
content than  ever.  '  She  can  hardly  be  civil  to  anybody,'  Agnes 
wrote  to  Catherine.  '  The  cry  now  is  all  "  London  "  or  at  least 
"  Berlin,"  and  she  cannot  imagine  why  papa  should  ever  have 
wished  to  condemn  us  to  such  a  prison.' 

Catherine  grew  pale  with  indignation  as  she  read  the  words, 
and  thought  of  her  father's  short-lived  joy  in  the  old  house  and 
its  few  green  fields,  or  of  the  confidence  which  had  soothed  his 
last  moments,  that  it  would  be  well  there  with  his  wife  and 
children,  far  from  the  hubbub  of  the  world. 

But  Rose  and  her  whims  were  not  facts  which  could  be 
put  aside.  They  would  have  to  be  grappled  with,  probably 


CHAP,  xi  SURREY  157 

humoured.  As  Catherine  strolled  out  into  the  garden,  listening 
alternately  for  Robert  and  for  the  carriage,  she  told  herself  that 
it  would  be  a  difficult  visit.  And  the  presence  of  Mr.  Langham 
would  certainly  not  diminish  its  difficulty.  The  mere  thought 
of  him  set  the  wife's  young  form  stiffening.  A  cold  breath 
seemed  to  blow  from  Edward  Langham,  which  chilled  Catherine's 
whole  being.  Why  was  Robert  so  fond  of  him  ? 

But  the  more  Langham  cut  himself  off  from  the  world,  the 
more  Robert  clung  to  him  in  his  wistful  affectionate  way.  The 
more  difficult  their  intercourse  became,  the  more  determined 
the  younger  man  seemed  to  be  to  maintain  it.  Catherine 
imagined  that  he  often  scourged  himself  in  secret  for  the  fact 
that  the  gratitude  which  had  once  flowed  so  readily  had  now 
become  a  matter  of  reflection  and  resolution. 

'Why  should  we  always  expect  to  get  pleasure  from  our 
friends  ? '  he  had  said  to  her  once  with  vehemence.  '  It  should 
be  pleasure  enough  to  love  them.'  And  she  knew  very  well  of 
whom  he  was  thinking. 

How  late  he  was  this  afternoon.  He  must  have  been  a  long 
round.  She  had  news  for  him  of  great  interest.  The  lodge- 
keeper  from  the  Hall  had  just  looked  in  to  tell  the  rector  that 
the  squire  and  his  widowed  sister  were  expected  home  in  four 
days. 

But,  interesting  as  the  news  was,  Catherine's  looks  as  she 
pondered  it  were  certainly  not  looks  of  pleased  expectation. 
Neither  of  them,  indeed,  had  much  cause  to  rejoice  in  the 
squire's  advent.  Since  their  arrival  in  the  parish  the  splendid 
Jacobean  Hall  had  been  untenanted.  The  squire,  who  was 
abroad  with  his  sister  at  the  time  of  their  coming,  had  sent  a 
civil  note  to  the  new  rector  on  his  settlement  in  the  parish, 
naming  some  common  Oxford  acquaintances,  and  desiring  him 
to  make  what  use  of  the  famous  Murewell  Library  he  pleased. 
'  I  hear  of  you  as  a  friend  to  letters,'  he  wrote  ;  '  do  my  books 
a  service  by  using  them.'  The  words  were  graceful  enough. 
Robert  had  answered  them  warmly.  He  had  also  availed  him- 
self largely  of  the  permission  they  had  conveyed.  We  shall  see 
presently  that  the  squire,  though  absent,  had  already  made  a 
deep  impression  on  the  young  man's  imagination. 

But  unfortunately  he  came  across  the  squire  in  two  capac- 
ities. Mr.  Wendover  was  not  only  the  owner  of  Murewell,  he 
was  also  the  owner  of  the  whole  land  of  the  parish,  where,  how- 
ever, by  a  curious  accident  of  inheritance,  dating  some  genera- 
tions back,  and  implying  some  very  remote  connection  between 
the  Wendover  and  Elsmere  families,  he  was  not  the  patron  of 
the  living.  Now  the  more  Elsmere  studied  him  under  this 
aspect,  the  deeper  became  his  dismay.  The  estate  was  entirely 
in  the  hands  of  an  agent  who  had  managed  it  for  some  fifteen 
years,  and  of  whose  character  the  rector,  before  he  had  been 
two  months  in  the  parish,  had  formed  the  very  poorest  opinion. 
Robert,  entering  upon  his  duties  with  the  ardour  of  the  modern 


158  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

reformer,  armed  not  only  with  charity  but  with  science,  found 
himself  confronted  by  the  opposition  of  a  man  who  combined 
the  shrewdness  of  an  attorney  with  the  callousness  of  a  drunkard. 
It  seemed  incredible  that  a  great  landowner  should  commit  his 
interests  and  the  interests  of  hundreds  of  human  beings  to  the 
hands  of  such  a  person. 

By  and  by,  however,  as  the  rector  penetrated  more  deeply 
into  the  situation,  he  found  his  indignation  transferring  itself 
more  and  more  from  the  man  to  the  master.  It  became  clear  to 
him  that  in  some  respects  Henslowe  suited  the  squire  admirably. 
It  became  also  clear  to  him  that  the  squire  had  taken  pains  for 
years  to  let  it  be  known  that  he  cared  not  one  rap  for  any 
human  being  on  his  estate  in  any  other  capacity  than  as  a  rent- 
payer  or  wage-receiver.  What !  Live  for  thirty  years  in  that 
great  house,  and  never  care  whether  your  tenants  and  labourers 
lived  like  pigs  or  like  men,  whether  the  old  people  died  of  damp, 
or  the  children  of  diphtheria,  which  you  might  have  prevented  ! 
Robert's  brow  grew  dark  over  it. 

The  click  of  an  opening  gate.  Catherine  shook  off  her  dreami- 
ness at  once,  and  hurried  along  the  path  to  meet  her  husband. 
In  another  moment  Elsmere  came  in  sight,  swinging  along,  a 
holly  stick  in  his  hand,  his  face  aglow  with  health  and  exercise 
and  kindling  at  the  sight  of  his  wife.  She  hung  on  his  arm, 
and,  with  his  hand  laid  tenderly  on  hers,  he  asked  her  how  she 
fared.  She  answered  briefly,  but  with  a  little  flush,  her  eyes 
raised  to  his.  She  was  within  a  few  weeks  of  motherhood. 

Then  they  strolled  along  talking.  He  gave  her  an  account 
of  his  afternoon,  which,  to  judge  from  the  worried  expression 
which  presently  effaced  the  joy  of  their  meeting,  had  been  spent 
in  some  unsuccessful  effort  or  other.  They  paused  after  a  while, 
and  stood  looking  over  the  plain  before  them  to  a  spot  beyond 
the  nearer  belt  of  woodland,  where  from  a  little  hollow  about 
three  miles  off  there  rose  a  cloud  of  bluish  smoke. 

'  He  will  do  nothing  ! '  cried  Catherine,  incredulous. 

'  Nothing !  It  is  the  policy  of  the  estate,  apparently,  to  let 
the  old  and  bad  cottages  fall  to  pieces.  He  sneers  at  one 
for  supposing  any  landowner  has  money  for  "philanthropy" 
just  now.  If  the  people  don't  like  the  houses  they  can  go.  I 
told  him  I  should  appeal  to  the  squire  as  soon  as  he  came 
home.' 

'What  did  he  say?' 

'  He  smiled,  as  much  as  to  say,  "  Do  as  you  like,  and  be  a  fool 
for  your  pains."  How  the  squire  can  let  that  man  tyrannise 
over  the  estate  as  he  does,  I  cannot  conceive.  Oh,  Catherine,  I 
am  full  of  qualms  about  the  squire  ! ' 

'  So  am  I,'  she  said,  with  a  little  darkening  of  her  clear  look. 
'Old  Benham  has  just  been  in  to  say  they  are  expected  on 
Thursday.' 

Robert  started.  '  Are  these  our  last  days  of  peace  ? '  he  said 
wistfully — '  the  last  days  of  our  honeymoon,  Catherine  ? ' 


CHAP,  xi  SURREY  159 

She  smiled  at  him  with  a  little  quiver  of  passionate  feeling 
under  the  smile. 

'  Can  anything  touch  that  ? '  she  said  under  her  breath. 

'  Do  you  know,'  he  said  presently,  his  voice  dropping,  '  that  it 
is  only  a  month  to  our  wedding  day  ?  Oh,  my  wife,  have  I  kept 
my  promise — is  the  new  life  as  rich  as  the  old  ? ' 

She  made  no  answer,  except  the  dumb  sweet  answer  that 
love  writes  on  eyes  and  lips.  Then  a  tremor  passed  over  her. 

'  Are  we  too  happy  ?    Can  it  be  well — be  right  ? ' 

'  Oh,  let  us  take  it  like  children ! '  he  cried,  with  a  shiver, 
almost  petulantly.  '  There  will  be  dark  hours  enough.  It  is  so 
good  to  be  happy.' 

She  leant  her  cheek  fondly  against  his  shoulder.  To  her  life 
always  meant  self-restraint,  self-repression,  self-deadening,  if 
need  be.  The  Puritan  distrust  of  personal  joy  as  something  dan- 
gerous and  ensnaring  was  deep  ingrained  in  her.  It  had  no 
natural  hold  on  him. 

They  stood  a  moment  hand  in  hand  fronting  the  cornfield 
and  the  sun-filled  west,  while  the  afternoon  breeze  blew  back 
the  man's  curly  reddish  hair,  long  since  restored  to  all  its  natural 
abundance. 

Presently  Eobert  broke  into  a  broad  smile. 

'  What  do  you  suppose  Langham  has  been  entertaining  Rose 
with  on  the  way,  Catherine  ?  I  wouldn't  miss  her  remarks  to- 
night on  the  escort  we  provided  her  for  a  good  deal.' 

Catherine  said  nothing,  but  her  delicate  eyebrows  went  up  a 
little.  Robert  stooped  and  lightly  kissed  her. 

'  You  never  performed  a  greater  act  of  virtue  even  in  your 
life,  Mrs.  Elsmere,  than  when  you  wrote  Langham  that  nice 
letter  of  invitation.' 

And  then  the  young  rector  sighed,  as  many  a  boyish  memory 
came  crowding  upon  him. 

A  sound  of  wheels  !  Robert's  long  legs  took  him  to  the  gate 
in  a  twinkling,  and  he  flung  it  open  just  as  Rose  drove  up  in 
fine  style,  a  thin  dark  man  beside  her. 

Rose  lent  her  bright  cheek  to  Catherine's  kiss,  and  the  two 
sisters  walked  up  to  the  door  together,  while  Robert  and  Lang- 
ham  loitered  after  them  talking. 

'  Oh,  Catherine  ! '  said  Rose  under  her  breath,  as  they  got  into 
the  drawing-room,  with  a  little  theatrical  gesture,  '  why  on  earth 
did  you  inflict  that  man  and  me  on  each  other  for  two  mortal 
hours  ? ' 

'  Sh-sh ! '  said  Catherine's  lips,  while  her  face  gleamed  with 
laughter. 

Rose  sank  flushed  upon  a  chair,  her  eyes  glancing  up  with  a 
little  furtive  anger  in  them  as  the  two  gentlemen  entered  the 
room. 

'  You  found  each  other  easily  at  Waterloo  ? '  asked  Robert. 

1  Mr.  Langham  would  never  have  found  me,'  said  Rose  drily  ; 
'  but  I  pounced  on  him  at  last — just,  I  believe,  as  he  was  begin- 


160  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

ning  to  cherish  the  hope  of  an  empty  carriage  and  the  solitary 
enjoyment  of  his  Saturday  Review.' 

Langham  smiled  nervously.  • '  Miss  Leyburn  is  too  hard  on  a 
blind  man,'  he  said,  holding  up  his  eyeglass  apologetically  ;  '  it 
was  my  eyes,  not  my  will,  that  were  at  fault.' 

Rose's  lip  curled  a  little.  'And  Robert,'  she  cried,  bending 
forward  as  though  something  had  just  occurred  to  her,  '  do  tell 
me — I  vowed  I  would  ask — is  Mr.  Langham  a  Liberal  or  a  Con- 
servative ?  He  doesn't  know  ! ' 

Robert  laughed,  so  did  Langham. 

'  Your  sister.'  he  said,  flushing,  '  will  have  one  so  very  precise 
in  all  one  says. 

He  turned  his  handsome  olive  face  towards  her,  an  unwonted 
spark  of  animation  lighting  up  his  black  eyes.  It  was  evident 
that  he  felt  himself  persecuted,  but  it  was  not  so  evident  whether 
he  enjoyed  the  process  or  disliked  it. 

'  On  dear,  no  ! '  said  Rose  nonchalantly.  '  Only  I  have  just 
come  from  a  house  where  everybody  either  loathes  Mr.  Gladstone 
or  would  die  for  him  to-morrow.  There  was  a  girl  of  seven  and 
a  boy  of  nine  who  were  always  discussing  "  Coercion "  in  the 
corners  of  the  schoolroom.  So,  of  course,  I  have  grown  political 
top,  and  began  to  catechise  Mr.  Langham  at  once,  and  when  he 
said  "  he  didn't  know,"  I  felt  I  should  like  to  set  those  children 
at  him  !  They  would  soon  put  some  principles  into  him  ! ' 

'It  is  not  generally  lack  of  principle,  Miss  Rose,'  said  her 
brother-in-law,  '  that  turns  a  man  a  doubter  in  politics,  but  too 
much ! ' 

And  while  he  spoke,  his  eyes  resting  on  Langham,  his  smile 
broadened  as  he  recalled  all  those  instances  in  their  Oxford 
past,  when  he  had  taken  a  humble  share  in  one  of  the  herculean 
efforts  on  the  part  of  Langham's  friends,  which  were  always 
necessary  whenever  it  was  a  question  of  screwing  a  vote  out  of 
him  on  any  debated  University  question. 

'  How  dull  it  must  be  to  have  too  much  principle ! '  cried 
Rose.  '  Like  a  mill  choked  with  corn.  No  bread  because  the 
machine  can't  work  ! ' 

'  Defend  me  from  my  friends ! '  cried  Langham,  roused. 
'Elsmere,  when  did  I  give  you  a  right  to  caricature  me  in 
this  way  1  If  I  were  interested,'  he  added,  subsiding  into  his 
usual  hesitating  ineffectiveness,  '  I  suppose  I  should  know  my 
own  mind.' 

And  then  seizing  the  muffins,  he  stood  presenting  them  to 
Rose  as  though  in  deprecation  of  any  further  personalities. 
Inside  him  there  was  a  hot  protest  against  an  unreasonable 
young  beauty  whom  he  had  done  his  miserable  best  to  entertain 
for  two  long  hours,  and  who  in  return  had  made  him  feel  him- 
self more  of  a  fool  than  he  had  done  for  years.  Since  when  had 
young  women  put  on  all  these  airs  ?  In  his  young  days  they 
knew  their  place. 

Catherine  meanwhile  sat  watching  her  sister.    The  child  was 


CHAP,  xi  SURREY  161 

more  beautiful  than  ever,  but  in  other  outer  respects  the  Rose 
of  Long  Whindale  had  undergone  much  transformation.  The 
puffed  sleeves,  the  aesthetic  skirts,  the  naive  adornments  of  bead 
and  shell,  the  formless  hat,  which  it  pleased  her  to  imagine 
'after  Gainsborough,'  had  all  disappeared.  She  was  clad  in 
some  soft  fawn-coloured  garment,  cut  very  much  in  the  fashion ; 
her  hair  was  closely  rolled  and  twisted  about  her  lightly- 
balanced  head ;  everything  about  her  was  neat  and  fresh  and 
tight -fitting.  A  year  ago  she  had  been  a  damsel  from  the 
'  Earthly  Paradise ' ;  now,  so  far  as  an  English  girl  can  achieve 
it,  she  might  have  been  a  model  for  Tissot.  In  this  phase,  as  in 
the  other,  there  was  a  touch  of  extravagance.  The  girl  was 
developing  fast,  but  had  clearly  not  yet  developed.  The  rest- 
lessness, the  self -consciousness  of  Long  Whindale  were  still 
there  ;  but  they  spoke  to  the  spectator  in  different  ways. 

But  in  her  anxious  study  of  her  sister  Catherine  did  not  for- 
get her  place  of  hostess.  '  Did  our  man  bring  you  through  the 
park,  Mr.  Langham  ? '  she  asked  him  timidly. 

'  Yes.  What  an  exquisite  old  house ! '  he  said,  turning  to 
her,  and  feeling  through  all  his  critical  sense  the  difference 
between  the  gentle  matronly  dignity  of  the  one  sister  and  the 
young  self-assertion  of  the  other. 

'  Ah,'  said  Robert,  '  I  kept  that  as  a  surprise  !  Did  you  ever 
see  a  more  perfect  place  ? ' 

'What  date?' 

'Early  Tudor — as  to  the  oldest  part.  It  was  built  by  a 
relation  of  Bishop  Fisher's ;  then  largely  rebuilt  under  James 
I.  Elizabeth  stayed  there  twice.  There  is  a  trace  of  a  visit  of 
Sidney's.  Waller  was  there,  and  left  a  copy  of  verses  in  the 
library.  Evelyn  laid  out  a  great  deal  of  the  garden.  Lord 
Clarendon  wrote  part  of  his  History  in  the  garden,  et  cetera, 
et  cetera.  The  place  is  steeped  in  associations,  and  as  beautiful 
as  a  dream  to  begin  with.' 

'  And  the  owner  of  all  this  is  the  author  of  The  Idols  of  the 
Marketplace  ? ' 

Robert  nodded. 

'  Did  you  ever  meet  him  at  Oxford  ?  I  believe  he  was  there 
once  or  twice  during  my  time,  but  I  never  saw  him.' 

'Yes,'  said  Langham,  thinking.  'I  met  him  at  dinner  at  the 
Vice-Chancellor's,  now  I  remember.  A  bizarre  and  formidable 
person — very  difficult  to  talk  to,'  he  added  reflectively. 

Then  as  he  looked  up  he  caught  a  sarcastic  twitch  of  Rose 
Leyburn's  lip  and  understood  it  in  a  moment.  Incontinently 
he  forgot  the  squire  and  fell  to  asking  himself  what  had  pos- 
sessed him  on  that  luckless  journey  down.  He  had  never 
seemed  to  himself  more  perverse,  more  unmanageable;  and 
for  once  his  philosophy  did  not  enable  him  to  swallow  the  cer- 
tainty that  this  slim  flashing  creature  must  have  thought  him 
a  morbid  idiot  with  as  much  sangfroid  as  usual. 

Robert  interrupted  his  reflections  by  some  Oxford  question, 


162  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

and  presently  Catherine  carried  off  Rose  to  her  room.  On  their 
way  they  passed  a  door,  beside  which  Catherine  paused  hesitat- 
ing, and  then  with  a  bright  flush  on  the  face,  which  had  such 
maternal  calm  in  it  already,  she  threw  her  arm  round  Rose  and 
drew  her  in.  It  was  a  white  empty  room,  smelling  of  the  roses 
outside,  and  waiting  in  the  evening  stillness  for  the  life  that 
was  to  be.  Rose  looked  at  it  all — at  the  piles  of  tiny  garments, 
the  cradle,  the  pictures  from  Retsch's  '  Song  of  the  Bell,'  which 
had  been  the  companions  of  their  own  childhood,  on  the  walls — 
and  something  stirred  in  the  girl's  breast. 

'  Catherine,  I  believe  you  have  everything  you  want,  or  you 
soon  will  have ! '  she  cried,  almost  with  a  kind  of  bitterness, 
laying  her  hands  on  her  sister's  shoulders. 

'  Everything  but  worthiness  ! '  said  Catherine  softly,  a  mist 
rising  in  her  calm  gray  eyes.  '  And  you,  Roschen,'  she  added 
wistfully,  'have  you  been  getting  a  little  more  what  you 
want?' 

'  What's  the  good  of  asking  ? '  said  the  girl,  with  a  little  shrug 
of  impatience.  'As  if  creatures  like  me  ever  got  what  they 
want !  London  has  been  good  fun  certainly — if  one  could  get 
enough  of  it.  Catherine,  how  long  is  that  marvellous  person 
going  to  stay  ? '  and  she  pointed  in  the  direction  of  Langham's 
room. 

'  A  week,'  said  Catherine,  smiling  at  the  girl's  disdainful  tone. 
'  I  was  afraid  you  didn't  take  to  him.' 

'  I  never  saw  such  a  being  before,'  declared  Rose — '  never  ! 
I  thought  I  should  never  get  a  plain  answer  from  him  about 
anything.  He  wasn't  even  quite  certain  it  was  a  fine  day  !  I 
wonder  if  you  set  fire  to  him  whether  he  would  be  sure  it  hurt ! 
A  week,  you  say  ?  Heigh  ho  !  what  an  age  ! ' 

'  Be  kind  to  him,'  said  Catherine,  discreetly  veiling  her  own 
feelings,  and  caressing  the  curly  golden  head  as  they  moved 
towards  the  door.  '  He's  a  poor  lone  don,  and  he  was  so  good 
to  Robert ! ' 

'  Excellent  reason  for  you,  Mrs.  Elsmere,'  said  Rose,  pouting ; 
'  but ' 

Her  further  remarks  were  cut  short  by  the  sound  of  the 
front-door  bell. 

'  Oh,  I  had  forgotten  Mr.  Newcome  ! '  cried  Catherine,  start- 
ing. '  Come  down  soon,  Rose,  and  help  us  through.' 

'  Who  is  he  ? '  inquired  Rose  sharply. 

'A  High  Church  clergyman  near  here,  whom  Robert  asked 
to  tea  this  afternoon,'  said  Catherine,  escaping. 

Rose  took  her  hat  off  very  leisurely.  The  prospect  down- 
stairs did  not  seem  to  justify  despatch.  She  lingered  and 
thought  of  'Lohengrin'  and  Albani,  of  the  crowd  of  artistic 
friends  that  had  escorted  her  to  Waterloo,  of  the  way  in 
which  she  had  been  applauded  the  night  before,  of  the  joys 
of  playing  Brahms  with  a  long-haired  pupil  of  Rubinstein's, 
who  had  dropped  on  one  knee  and  kissed  her  hand  at  the  end 


CHAP,  xii  SURREY  163 

of  it,  etc.  During  the  last  six  weeks  the  colours  of  '  this  thread- 
bare world '  had  been  freshening  before  her  in  marvellous 
fashion.  And  now,  as  she  stood  looking  out,  the  quiet  fields 
opposite,  the  sight  of  a  cow  pushing  its  head  through  the  hedge, 
the  infinite  sunset  sky,  the  quiet  of  the  house,  filled  her  with  a 
sudden  depression.  How  dull  it  all  seemed — how  wanting  in 
the  glow  of  life ! 


CHAPTER  XII 

MEANWHILE  downstairs  a  curious  little  scene  was  passing, 
watched  by  Langham,  who,  in  his  usual  anti-social  way,  had 
retreated  into  a  corner  of  his  own  as  soon  as  another  visitor 
appeared.  Beside  Catherine  sat  a  Ritualist  clergyman  in  cas- 
sock and  long  cloak — a  saint  clearly,  though  perhaps,  to  judge 
from  the  slight  restlessness  of  movement  that  seemed  to  quiver 
through  him  perpetually,  an  irritable  one.  But  he  had  the 
saint's  wasted  unearthly  look,  the  ascetic  brow  high  and  narrow, 
the  veins  showing  through  the  skin,  and  a  personality  as  mag- 
netic as  it  was  strong. 

Catherine  listened  to  the  new-comer,  and  gave  him  his  tea, 
with  an  aloofness  of  manner  which  was  not  lost  on  Langham. 
'  She  is  the  Thirty -nine  Articles  in  the  flesh  ! '  he  said  to  him- 
self. '  For  her  there  must  neither  be  too  much  nor  too  little. 
How  can  Elsmere  stand  it  1 ' 

Elsmere  apparently  was  not  perfectly  happy.  He  sat  bal- 
ancing his  long  person  over  the  arm  of  a  chair  listening  to  the 
recital  of  some  of  the  High  Churchman's  parish  troubles  with  a 
slight  half -embarrassed  smile.  The  vicar  of  Mottringham  was 
always  in  trouble.  The  narrative  he  was  pouring  out  took 
shape  in  Langham's  sarcastic  sense  as  a  sort  of  classical  epic, 
with  the  High  Churchman  as  a  new  champion  of  Christendom, 
harassed  on  all  sides  by  pagan  parishioners,  crass  church- 
wardens, and  treacherous  bishops.  Catherine's  fine  face  grew 
more  and  more  set,  nay  disdainful.  Mr.  Newcome  was  quite 
blind  to  it.  Women  never  entered  into  his  calculations  except 
as  sisters  or  as  penitents.  At  a  certain  diocesan  conference  he 
had  discovered  a  sympathetic  fibre  in  the  young  rector  of  Mure- 
well,  which  had  been  to  the  imperious  persecuted  zealot  like 
water  to  the  thirsty.  He  had  come  to-day,  drawn  by  the  same 
quality  in  Elsmere  as  had  originally  attracted  Langham  to  the 
St.  Anselm's  undergraduate,  and  he  sat  pouring  himself  out 
with  as  much  freedom  as  if  all  his  companions  had  been  as 
ready  as  he  was  to  die  for  an  alb,  or  to  spend  half  their  days  in 
piously  circumventing  a  bishop. 

But  presently  the  conversation  had  slid,  no  one  knew  how, 
from  Mottringham  and  its  intrigues  to  London  and  its  teeming 
East.  Robert  was  leading,  his  eye  now  on  the  apostolic-looking 


164  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

priest,  now  on  his  wife.  Mr.  Newcome  resisted,  but  Robert  had 
his  way.  Then  it  came  out  that  behind  these  battles  of  kites 
and  crows  at  Mottringham,  there  lay  an  heroic  period,  when  the 
pale  ascetic  had  wrestled  ten  years  with  London  poverty,  leaving 
health  and  youth  and  nerves  behind  him  in  the  meUe.  Robert 
dragged  it  out  at  last,  that  struggle,  into  open  view,  but  with 
difficulty.  The  Ritualist  may  glory  in  the  discomfiture  of  an 
Erastian  bishop — what  Christian  dare  parade  ten  years  of  love 
to  God  and  man?  And  presently  round  Elsmere's  lip  there 
dawned  a  little  smile  of  triumph.  Catherine  had  shaken  off  her 
cold  silence,  her  Puritan  aloofness,  was  bending  forward  eagerly 
— listening.  Stroke  by  stroke,  as  the  words  and  facts  were 
beguiled  from  him,  all  that  was  futile  and  quarrelsome  in  the 
sharp-featured  priest  sank  out  of  sight ;  the  face  glowed  with 
inward  light ;  the  stature  of  the  man  seemed  to  rise  ;  the  angel 
in  him  unsheathed  its  wings.  Suddenly  a  story  of  the  slums 
that  Mr.  Newcome  was  telling — a  story  of  the  purest  Christian 
heroism  told  in  the  simplest  way — came  to  an  end,  and  Catherine 
leaned  towards  him  with  a  long  quivering  breath. 

'  Oh,  thank  you,  thank  you  !  That  must  have  been  a  joy,  a 
privilege ! ' 

Mr.  Newcome  turned  and  looked  at  her  with  surprise. 

'  Yes,  it  was  a  privilege,'  he  said  slowly — the  story  had  been 
an  account  of  the  rescue  of  a  young  country  lad  from  a  London 
den  of  thieves  and  profligates — 'you  are  right ;  it  was  just  that.' 

And  then  some  sensitive  inner  fibre  of  the  man  was  set 
vibrating,  and  he  would  talk  no  more  of  himself  or  his  past,  do 
what  they  would. 

So  Robert  had  hastily  to  provide  another  subject,  and  he  fell 
upon  that  of  the  squire. 

Mr.  Newcome's  eyes  flashed. 

'  He  is  coming  back  ?  I  am  sorry  for  you,  Elsmere.  "  Woe  is 
me  that  I  am  constrained  to  dwell  with  Mesech,  and  to  have  my 
habitation  among  the  tents  of  Kedar  !  " ' 

And  he  fell  back  in  his  chair,  his  lips  tightening,  his  thin 
long  hand  lying  along  the  arm  of  it,  answering  to  that  general 
impression  of  combat,  of  the  spiritual  athlete,  that  hung  about 
him. 

'  I  don't  know,'  said  Robert  brightly,  as  he  leant  against  the 
mantelpiece  looking  curiously  at  his  visitor.  '  The  squire  is  a 
man  of  strong  character,  of  vast  learning.  His  library  is  one  of 
the  finest  in  England,  and  it  is  at  my  service.  I  am  not  con- 
cerned with  Ms  opinions.' 

'  Ah,  I  see,'  said  Newcome  in  his  driest  voice,  but  sadly.  '  You 
are  one  of  the  people  who  believe  in  what  you  call  tolerance — I 
remember.' 

'  Yes,  that  is  an  impeachment  to  which  I  plead  guilty,'  said 
Robert,  perhaps  with  equal  dryness  ;  '  and  you — have  your 
worries  driven  you  to  throw  tolerance  overboard  ? ' 

Newcome  bent  forward  quickly.     Strange  glow  and  intensity 


CHAP,  xii  SURREY  165 

of  the  fanatical  eyes — strange  beauty  of  the  wasted  persecuting 
lips ! 

'  Tolerance  ! '  he  said  with  irritable  vehemence — '  tolerance  ! 
Simply  another  name  for  betrayal,  cowardice,  desertion^nothing 
else.  God,  Heaven,  Salvation  on  the  one  side,  the  devil  and  hell 
on  the  other — and  one  miserable  life,  one  wretched  sin-stained 
will,  to  win  the  battle  with ;  and  in  such  a  state  of  things 
you — '  he  dropped  his  voice,  throwing  out  every  word  with 
a  scornful,  sibilant  emphasis — 'you  would  have  us  behave  as 
though  our  friends  were  our  enemies  and  our  enemies  our 
friends,  as  though  eternal  misery  were  a  bagatelle  and  our 
faith  a  mere  alternative.  /  stand  for  Christ,  and  His  foes  are 
mine.' 

'  By  which  I  suppose  you  mean,'  said  Robert  quietly,  '  that 
you  would  shut  your  door  on  the  writer  of  The  Idols  of  the 
Market-place  ? ' 

'  Certainly.'  ^ 

And  the  priest  rose,  his  whole  attention  concentrated  on 
Robert,  as  though  some  deeper-lying  motive  were  suddenly 
brought  into  play  than  any  suggested  by  the  conversation 
itself. 

'  Certainly.  Judge  not — so  long  as  a  man  has  not  judged  him- 
self,— only  till  then.  As  to  an  open  enemy,  the  Christian's  path 
is  clear.  We  are  but  soldiers  under  orders.  What  business  have 
we  to  be  truce-making  on  our  own  account  ?  The  war  is  not 
ours,  but  God's  ! ' 

Robert's  eyes  had  kindled.  He  was  about  to  indulge  himself 
in  such  a  quick  passage  of  arms  as  all  such  natures  as  his 
delight  in,  when  his  look  travelled  past  the  gaunt  figure  of  the 
Ritualist  vicar  to  his  wife.  A  sudden  pang  smote,  silenced  him. 
She  was  sitting  with  her  face  raised  to  Newcome ;  and  her 
beautiful  gray  eyes  were  full  of  a  secret  passion  of  sympathy. 
It  was  like  the  sudden  re-emergence  of  something  repressed,  the 
satisfaction  of  something  hungry.  Robert  moved  closer  to  her, 
and  the  colour  flushed  over  all  his  young  boyish  face. 

'  To  me.'  he  said  in  a  low  voice,  his  eyes  fixed  rather  on  her 
than  on  Newcome,  '  a  clergyman  has  enough  to  do  with  those 
foes  of  Christ  he  cannot  choose  but  recognise.  There  is  no 
making  truce  with  vice  or  cruelty.  Why  should  we  complicate 
our  task  and  spend  in  needless  struggle  the  energies  we  might 
give  to  love  and  to  our  brother  1 ' 

His  wife  turned  to  him.  There  was  trouble  in  her  look,  then 
a  swift  lovely  dawn  of  something  indescribable.  Newcome 
moved  away  with  a  gesture  that  was  half  bitterness,  half 
weariness. 

'  Wait,  my  friend,'  he  said  slowly, '  till  you  have  watched  that 
man's  books  eating  the  very  heart  out  01  a  poor  creature  as  I 
have.  When  you  have  once  seen  Christ  robbed  of  a  soul  that 
might  have  been  His,  by  the  infidel  of  genius,  you  will  loathe 
all  this  Laodicean  cant  of  tolerance  as  I  do  ! ' 


166  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  a 

There  was  an  awkward  pause.  Langham,  with  his  eyeglass 
on,  was  carefully  examining  the  make  of  a  carved  paper-knife 
lying  near  him.  The  strained  preoccupied  mind  of  the  High 
Churchman  had  never  taken  the  smallest  account  of  his  presence, 
of  which  Robert  had  been  keenly,  not  to  say  humorously,  con- 
scious throughout. 

But  after  a  minute  or  so  the  tutor  got  up,  strolled  forward, 
and  addressed  Robert  on  some  Oxford  topic  of  common  interest. 
Newcome,  in  a  kind  of  dream  which  seemed  to  have  suddenly 
descended  on  him,  stood  near  them,  his  priestly  cloak  falling  in 
long  folds  about  him,  his  ascetic  face  grave  and  rapt.  Gradually, 
however,  the  talk  of  the  two  men  dissipated  the  mystical  cloud 
about  him.  He  began  to  listen,  to  catch  the  savour  of  Langham's 
modes  of  speech,  and  of  his  languid  indifferent  personality. 

'  I  must  go,'  he  said  abruptly,  after  a  minute  or  two,  breaking 
in  upon  the  friends'  conversation.  'I  shall  hardly  get  home 
before  dark.' 

He  took  a  cold  punctilious  leave  of  Catherine,  and  a  still 
colder  and  slighter  leave  of  Langham.  Elsmere  accompanied 
him  to  the  gate. 

On  the  way  the  older  man  suddenly  caught  him  by  the 
arm. 

'  Elsmere,  let  me — I  am  the  elder  by  so  many  years — let  me 
speak  to  you.  My  heart  goes  out  to  you  ! ' 

And  the  eagle  face  softened ;  the  harsh  commanding  pres- 
ence became  enveloping,  magnetic.  Robert  paused  and  looked 
down  upon  him,  a  quick  light  of  foresight  in  his  eye.  He  felt 
what  was  coming. 

And  down  it  swept  upon  him,  a  hurricane  of  words  hot  from 
Newcome's  inmost  being,  a  protest  winged  by  the  gathered 
passion  of  years  against  certain  '  dangerous  tendencies '  the  elder 
priest  discerned  in  the  younger,  against  the  worship  of  intellect 
and  science  as  such  which  appeared  in  Elsmere's  talk,  in  Els- 
mere's  choice  of  friends.  It  was  the  eternal  cry  of  the  mystic 
of  all  ages. 

'  Scholarship  !  learning  ! '  Eyes  and  lips  flashed  into  a  vehe- 
ment scorn.  'You  allow  them  a  value  in  themselves,  apart 
from  the  Christian's  test.  It  is  the  modern  canker,  the  modern 
curse  !  Thank  God,  my  years  in  London  burnt  it  out  of  me ! 
Oh,  my  friend,  what  have  you  and  I  to  do  with  all  these  curious 
triflings,  which  lead  men  oftener  to  rebellion  than  to  worship  ? 
Is  this  a  time  for  wholesale  trust,  for  a  maudlin  universal  sym- 
pathy 1  Nay,  rather  a  day  of  suspicion,  a  day  of  repression  ! — a 
time  for  trampling  on  the  lusts  of  the  mind  no  less  than  the 
lusts  of  the  body,  a  time  when  it  is  better  to  believe  than  to 
know,  to  pray  than  to  understand  ! ' 

Robert  was  silent  a  moment,  and  they  stood  together,  New- 
come's  gaze  of  fiery  appeal  fixed  upon  him. 

'  We  are  differently  made,  you  and  I,'  said  the  young  rector 
at  last  with  difficulty.  '  Where  you  see  temptation  I  see  oppor- 


CHAP,  xii  SURREY  167 

tunity.  I  cannot  conceive  of  God  as  the  Arch-plotter  against 
His  own  creation !' 

Newcome  dropped  his  hold  abruptly. 

'A  groundless  optimism,'  he  said  with  harshness.  'On  the 
track  of  the  soul  from  birth  to  death  there  are  two  sleuth- 
hounds — Sin  and  Satan.  Mankind  for  ever  flies  them,  is  for 
ever  vanquished  and  devoured.  I  see  life  always  as  a  thread- 
like path  between  abysses  along  which  man  creeps' — and  his 
gesture  illustrated  the  words — 'with  bleeding  hands  and  feet 
towards  one — narrow — solitary  outlet.  Woe  to  him  if  he  turn 
to  the  right  hand  or  the  left — "  I  will  repay,  saith  the  Lord  ! " ' 

Elsmere  drew  himself  up  suddenly  ;  the  words  seemed  to  him 
a  blasphemy.  Then  something  stayed  the  vehement  answer  on 
his  lips.  It  was  a  sense  of  profound  intolerable  pity.  What  a 
maimed  life  !  what  an  indomitable  soul !  Husbandhood,  father- 
hood, and  all  the  sacred  education  that  flows  from  human  joy 
for  ever  self -forbidden,  and  this  grim  creed  for  recompense  ! 

He  caught  Newcome's  hand  with  a  kind  of  filial  eagerness. 

'You  are  a  perpetual  lesson  to  me,'  he  said,  most  gently. 
'  When  the  world  is  too  much  with  me,  I  think  of  you  and  am 
rebuked.  God  bless  you  !  But  I  know  myself.  If  I  could  see 
life  and  God  as  you  see  them  for  one  hour,  I  should  cease  to  be 
a  Christian  in  the  next ! ' 

A  flush  of  something  like  sombre  resentment  passed  over 
Newcome's  face.  There  is  a  tyrannical  element  in  all  fanaticism, 
an  element  which  makes  opposition  a  torment.  He  turned 
abruptly  away,  and  Robert  was  left  alone. 

It  was  a  still  clear  evening,  rich  in  the  languid  softness  and 
balm  which  mark  the  first  approaches  of  autumn.  Elsmere 
walked  back  to  the  house,  his  head  uplifted  to  the  sky  which 
lay  beyond  the  cornfield,  his  whole  being  wrought  into  a  pas- 
sionate protest — a  passionate  invocation  of  all  things  beautiful 
and  strong  and  free,  a  clinging  to  life  and  nature  as  to  something 
wronged  and  outraged. 

Suddenly  his  wife  stood  beside  him.  She  had  come  down  to 
warn  him  that  it  was  late  and  that  Langham  had  gone  to  dress ; 
but  she  stood  lingering  by  his  side  after  her  message  was  given, 
and  he  made  no  movement  to  go  in.  He  turned  to  her,  the 
exaltation  gradually  dying  out  of  his  face,  and  at  last  he  stooped 
and  kissed  her  with  a  kind  of  timidity  unlike  him.  She  clasped 
both  hands  on  his  arm  and  stood  pressing  towards  him  as  though 
to  make  amends — for  she  knew  not  what.  Something — some 
sharp  momentary  sense  of  difference,  of  antagonism,  had  hurt 
that  inmost  fibre  which  is  the  conscience  of  true  passion.  She 
did  the  most  generous,  the  most  ample  penance  for  it  as  she 
stood  there  talking  to  him  of  half -indifferent  things,  but  with  a 
magic,  a  significance  of  eye  and  voice  which  seemed  to  take  all  the 
severity  from  her  beauty  and  make  her  womanhood  itself. 

At  the  evening  meal  Rose  appeared  in  pale  blue,  and  it  seemed 


168  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

to  Langham,  fresh  from  the  absolute  seclusion  of  college  rooms 
in  vacation,  that  everything  looked  flat  and  stale  beside  her, 
beside  the  flash  of  her  white  arms,  the  gleam  of  her  hair,  the 
confident  grace  of  every  movement.  He  thought  her  much  too 
self-conscious  and  self-satisfied  ;  and  she  certainly  did  not  make 
herself  agreeable  to  him  ;  but  for  all  that  he  could  hardly  take 
his  eyes  off  her  ;  and  it  occurred  to  him  once  or  twice  to  envy 
Robert  the  easy  childish  friendliness  she  showed  to  him,  and 
to  him  alone  of  the  party.  The  lack  of  real  sympathy  between 
her  and  Catherine  was  evident  to  the  stranger  at  once — 
what,  indeed,  could  the  two  have  in  common  ?  He  saw  that 
Catherine  was  constantly  on  the  point  of  blaming,  and  Rose 
constantly  on  the  point  of  rebelling.  He  caught  the  wrinkling 
of  Catherine's  brow  as  Rose  presently,  in  emulation  apparently 
of  some  acquaintances  she  had  been  making  in  London,  let  slip 
the  names  of  some  of  her  male  friends  without  the  'Mr.,'  or 
launched  into  some  bolder  affectation  than  usual  of  a  compre- 
hensive knowledge  of  London  society.  The  girl,  in  spite  of  all 
her  beauty,  and  her  fashion,  and  the  little  studied  details  of  her 
dress,  was  in  reality  so  crude,  so  much  of  a  child  under  it  all, 
that  it  made  her  audacities  and  assumptions  the  more  absurd, 
and  he  could  see  that  Robert  was  vastly  amused  by  them. 

But  Langham  was  not  merely  amused  by  her.  She  was  too 
beautiful  and  too  full  of  character. 

It  astonished  him  to  find  himself  afterwards  edging  over  to 
the  corner  where  she  sat  with  the  rectory  cat  on  her  knee — an 
inferior  animal,  but  the  best  substitute  for  Chattie  available. 
So  it  was,  however ;  and  once  in  her  neighbourhood  he  made 
another  serious  effort  to  get  her  to  talk  to  him.  The  Elsmeres 
had  never  seen  him  so  conversational.  He  dropped  his  para- 
doxical melancholy  ;  he  roared  as  gently  as  any  sucking  dove  ; 
and  Robert,  catching  from  the  pessimist  of  St.  Anselm's,  as  the 
evening  went  on,  some  hesitating  commonplaces  worthy  of  a 
bashful  undergraduate  on  the  subject  of  the  boats  and  Com- 
memoration, had  to  beat  a  hasty  retreat,  so  greatly  did  the 
situation  tickle  his  sense  of  humour. 

But  the  tutor  made  his  various  ventures  under  a  discouraging 
sense  of  failure.  What  a  capricious  ambiguous  creature  it  was, 
how  fearless,  how  disagreeably  alive  to  all  his  own  damaging 
peculiarities !  Never  had  he  been  so  piqued  for  years,  and  as 
he  floundered  about  trying  to  find  some  common  ground  where 
he  and  she  might  be  at  ease,  he  was  conscious  throughout  of  her 
mocking  indifferent  eyes,  which  seemed  to  be  saying  to  him  all 
the  time,  '  You  are  not  interesting — no,  not  a  bit !  You  are 
tiresome,  and  I  see  through  you,  but  I  must  talk  to  you,  I  sup- 
pose, faute  de  mieux.' 

Long  before  the  little  party  separated  for  the  night  Lang- 
ham  had  given  it  up,  and  had  betaken  himself  to  Catherine, 
reminding  himself  with  some  sharpness  that  he  had  come  down 
to  study  his  friend's  life,  rather  than  the  humours  of  a  provoking 


CHAP,  xn  SURREY  169 

girl.  How  still  the  summer  night  was  round  the  isolated 
rectory ;  how  fresh  and  spotless  were  all  the  appointments  of 
the  house ;  what  a  Quaker  neatness  and  refinement  everywhere  ! 
He  drank  in  the  scent  of  air  and  flowers  with  which  the  rooms 
were  filled  ;  for  the  first  time  his  fastidious  sense  was  pleasantly 
conscious  of  Catherine's  grave  beauty ;  and  even  tne  mystic 
ceremonies  of  family  prayer  had  a  certain  charm  for  him,  pagan 
as  he  was.  How  much  dignity  and  persuasiveness  it  has  still, 
he  thought  to  himself,  this  commonplace  country  life  of  ours,  on 
its  best  sides ! 

Half -past  ten  arrived.  Rose  just  let  him  touch  her  hand ; 
Catherine  gave  him  a  quiet  good-night,  with  various  hospitable 
wishes  for  his  nocturnal  comfort,  and  the  ladies  withdrew.  He 
saw  Robert  open  the  door  for  his  wife,  and  catch  her  thin  white 
fingers  as  she  passed  him  with  all  the  secrecy  and  passion  of  a 
lover. 

Then  they  plunged  into  the  study,  he  and  Robert,  and  smoked 
their  fill.  The  study  was  an  astonishing  medley.  Books,  natural 
history  specimens,  a  half -written  sermon,  fishing-rods,  cricket- 
bats,  a  huge  medicine  cupboard  —  all  the  main  elements  of 
Elsmere's  new  existence  were  represented  there.  In  the  draw- 
ing-room with  his  wife  and  his  sister-in-law  he  had  been  as 
much  of  a  boy  as  ever  ;  here  clearly  he  was  a  man,  very  much 
in  earnest.  What  about  1  What  did  it  all  come  to  ?  Can  the 
English  country  clergyman  do  much  with  his  life  and  his 
energies  ?  Langham  approached  the  subject  with  his  usual 
scepticism. 

Robert  for  a  while,  however,  did  not  help  him  to  solve  it.  He 
fell  at  once  to  talking  about  the  squire,  as  though  it  cleared  his 
mind  to  talk  out  his  difficulties  even  to  so  ineffective  a  coun- 
sellor as  Langham.  Langham,  indeed,  was  but  faintly  inter- 
ested in  the  squire's  crimes  as  a  landlord,  but  there  was  a 
certain  interest  to  be  got  out  of  the  struggle  in  Elsmere's  mind 
between  the  attractiveness  of  the  squire,  as  one  of  the  most 
difficult  and  original  personalities  of  English  letters,  and  that 
moral  condemnation  of  him  as  a  man  of  possessions  and  ordi- 
nary human  responsibilities  with  which  the  young  reforming 
rector  was  clearly  penetrated.  So  that,  as  long  as  he  could 
smoke  under  it,  he  was  content  to  let  his  companion  describe 
to  him  Mr.  Wendover's  connection  with  the  property,  his  acces- 
sion to  it  in  middle  life  after  a  long  residence  in  Germany,  his 
ineffectual  attempts  to  play  the  English  country  gentleman, 
and  his  subsequent  complete  withdrawal  from  the  life  about 
him. 

'  You  have  no  idea  what  a  queer  sort  of  existence  he  lives  in 
that  huge  place,'  said  Robert  with  energy.  '  He  is  not  unpopular 
exactly  with  the  poor  down  here.  When  they  want  to  belabour 
anybody  they  lay  on  at  the  agent,  Henslowe.  On  the  whole,  I 
have  come  to  the  conclusion  the  poor  like  a  mystery.  They 
never  see  him  ;  when  he  is  here  the  park  is  shut  up ;  the 


170  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  a 

common  report  is  that  he  walks  at  night ;  and  he  lives  alone 
in  that  enormous  house  with  his  books.  The  county  folk  have  all 
quarrelled  with  him,  or  nearly.  It  pleases  him  to  get  a  few  of 
the  humbler  people  about,  clergy,  professional  men,  and  so  on, 
to  dine  with  him  sometimes.  And  he  often  fills  the  Hall,  I  am 
told,  with  London  people  for  a  day  or  two.  But  otherwise  he 
knows  no  one,  and  nobody  knows  him.' 

'  But  you  say  he  has  a  widowed  sister  ?  How  does  she  relish 
the  kind  of  life  ? ' 

'  Oh,  by  all  accounts,'  said  the  rector  with  a  shrug,  '  she  is  as 
little  like  other  people  as  himself.  A  queer  elfish  little  creature, 
they  say,  as  fond  of  solitude  down  here  as  the  squire,  and  full 
of  hobbies.  In  her  youth  she  was  about  the  court.  Then  she 
married  a  canon  of  Warham,  one  of  the  popular  preachers,  I 
believe,  of  the  day.  There  is  a  bright  little  cousin  of  hers,  a 
certain  Lady  Helen  Varley,  who  lives  near  here,  and  tells  me 
stories  of  her.  She  must  be  the  most  whimsical  little  aristocrat 
imaginable.  She  liked  her  husband  apparently,  but  she  never 
got  over  leaving  London  and  the  fashionable  world,  and  is  as 
hungry  now,  after  her  long  fast,  for  titles  and  big -wigs,  as 
though  she  were  the  purest  parvenu.  The  squire  of  course 
makes  mock  of  her,  and  she  has  no  influence  with  him.  How- 
ever, there  is  something  naive  in  the  stories  they  tell  of  her.  I 
feel  as  if  I  might  get  on  with  her.  But  the  squire  ! ' 

And  the  rector,  having  laid  down  his  pipe,  took  to  studying 
his  boots  with  a  certain  dolefulness. 

Langham,  however,  who  always  treated  the  subjects  of  con- 
versation presented  to  him  as  an  epicure  treats  foods,  felt  at 
this  point  that  he  had  had  enough  of  the  Wendovers,  and 
started  something  else. 

'  So  you  physic  bodies  as  well  as  minds  ? '  he  said,  pointing  to 
the  medicine  cupboard. 

'  I  should  think  so  ! '  cried  Robert,  brightening  at  once.  '  Last 
winter  I  causticked  all  the  diphtheritic  throats  in  the  place  with 
my  own  hand.  Our  parish  doctor  is  an  infirm  old  noodle,  and  I 
just  had  to  do  it.  And  if  the  state  of  part  of  the  parish  remains 
what  it  is,  it's  a  pleasure  I  may  promise  myself  most  years.  But 
it  shan't  remain  what  it  is.' 

And  the  rector  reached  out  his  hand  again  for  his  pipe,  and 
gave  one  or  two  energetic  puffs  to  it  as  he  surveyed  his  friend 
stretched  before  him  in  the  depths  of  an  armchair. 

'  I  will  make  myself  a  public  nuisance,  but  the  people  shall 
have  their  drains  ! ' 

'  It  seems  to  me,'  said  Langham,  musing,  '  that  in  my  youth 
people  talked  about  Ruskin  ;  now  they  talk  about  drains.' 

'And  quite  right  too.  Dirt  and  drains,  Catherine  says  I 
have  gone  mad  upon  them.  It's  all  very  well,  but  they  are  the 
foundations  of  a  sound  religion.' 

'Dirt,  drains,  and  Darwin,'  said  Langham  meditatively, 
taking  up  Darwin's  Earthworms,  which  lay  on  the  study  table 


CHAP,  xii  SURREY  171 

beside  him,  side  by  side  with  a  volume  of  Grant  Allen's  Sketches. 
'  I  didn't  know  you  cared  for  this  sort  of  thing  ! ' 

Robert  did  not  answer  for  a  moment,  and  a  faint  flush  stole 
into  his  face. 

'  Imagine,  Langham  ! '  he  said  presently,  '  I  had  never  read 
even  The  Origin  of  Species  before  I  came  here.  We  used  to  take 
the  thing  half  for  granted,  I  remember,  at  Oxford,  in  a  more  or 
less  modified  sense.  But  to  drive  the  mind  through  all  the 
details  of  the  evidence,  to  force  one's  self  to  understand  the 
whole  hypothesis  and  the  grounds  for  it,  is  a  very  different 
matter.  It  is  a  revelation.' 

'  Yes,'  said  Langham  ;  and  could  not  forbear  adding,  '  but  it 
is  a  revelation,  my  friend,  that  has  not  always  been  held  to 
square  with  other  revelations.' 

In  general  these  two  kept  carefully  off  the  religious  ground. 
The  man  who  is  religious  by  nature  tends  to  keep  his  treasure 
hid  from  the  man  who  is  critical  by  nature,  and  Langham  was 
much  more  interested  in  other  things.  But  still  it  had  always 
been  understood  that  each  was  free  to  say  what  he  would. 

'  There  was  a  natural  panic,'  said  Robert,  throwing  back  his 
head  at  the  challenge.  '  Men  shrank  and  will  always  shrink, 
say  what  you  will,  from  what  seems  to  touch  things  dearer  to 
them  than  life.  But  the  panic  is  passing.  The  smoke  is  clear- 
ing away,  and  we  see  that  the  battle-field  is  falling  into  new 
lines.  But  the  old  truth  remains  the  same.  Where  and  when 
and  how  you  will,  but  somewhen  and  somehow,  God  created  the 
heavens  and  the  earth  ! ' 

Langham  said  nothing.  It  had  seemed  to  him  for  long  that 
the  clergy  were  becoming  dangerously  ready  to  throw  the  Old 
Testament  overboard,  and  all  that  it  appeared  to  him  to  imply 
was  that  men's  logical  sense  is  easily  benumbed  where  their 
hearts  are  concerned. 

'Not  that  every  one  need  be  troubled  with  the  new  facts,' 
resumed  Robert  after  a  while,  going  back  to  his  pipe.  '  Why 
should  they  ?  We  are  not  saved  by  Darwinism.  I  should  never 
press  them  on  my  wife,  for  instance,  with  all  her  clearness  and 
courage  of  mind. 

His  voice  altered  as  he  mentioned  his  wife — grew  extraordin- 
arily soft,  even  reverential. 

'It  would  distress  her?'  said  Langham  interrogatively,  and 
inwardly  conscious  of  pursuing  investigations  begun  a  year 
before. 

'  Yes,  it  would  distress  her.  She  holds  the  old  ideas  as  she 
was  taught  them.  It  is  all  beautiful  to  her,  what  may  seem 
doubtful  or  grotesque  to  others.  And  why  should  I  or  any  one 
else  trouble  her  ?  I  above  all,  who  am  not  fit  to  tie  her  shoe- 
strings.' 

The  young  husband's  face  seemed  to  gleam  in  the  dim  light 
which  fell  upon  it.  Langham  involuntarily  put  up  his  hand  in 
silence  and  touched  his  sleeve.  Robert  gave  him  a  quiet  friendly 


172  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

look,  and  the  two  men  instantly  plunged  into  some  quite  trivial 
and  commonplace  subject. 

Langham  entered  his  room  that  night  with  a  renewed  sense 
of  pleasure  in  the  country  quiet,  the  peaceful  flower- scented 
house.  Catherine,  who  was  an  admirable  housewife,  had  put 
out  her  best  guest-sheets  for  his  benefit,  and  the  tutor,  accus- 
tomed for  long  years  to  the  second-best  of  college  service,  looked 
at  their  shining  surfaces  and  frilled  edges,  at  the  freshly  matted 
floor,  at  the  flowers  on  the  dressing-table,  at  the  spotlessness  of 
everything  in  the  room,  with  a  distinct  sense  that  matrimony 
had  its  advantages.  He  had  come  down  to  visit  the  Elsmeres, 
sustained  by  a  considerable  sense  of  virtue.  He  still  loved 
Elsmere  and  cared  to  see  him.  It  was  a  much  colder  love,  no 
doubt,  than  that  which  he  had  given  to  the  undergraduate.  But 
the  man  altogether  was  a  colder  creature,  who  for  years  had 
been  drawing  in  tentacle  after  tentacle,  and  becoming  more  and 
more  content  to  live  without  his  kind.  Robert's  parsonage, 
however,  and  Robert's  wife  had  no  attractions  for  him  ;  and  it 
was  with  an  effort  that  he  had  made  up  his  mind  to  accept  the 
invitation  which  Catherine  had  made  an  effort  to  write. 

And,  after  all,  the  experience  promised  to  be  pleasant.  His 
fastidious  love  for  the  quieter,  subtler  sorts  of  beauty  was 
touched  by  the  Elsmere  surroundings.  And  whatever  Miss 
Leyburn  might  be,  she  was  not  commonplace.  The  demon  of 
convention  had  no  large  part  in  her  I  Langham  lay  awake  for 
a  time  analysing  his  impressions  of  her  with  some  gusto,  and 
meditating,  with  a  whimsical  candour  which  seldom  failed  him, 
on  the  manner  in  which  she  had  trampled  on  him,  and  the 
reasons  why. 

He  woke  up,  however,  in  a  totally  different  frame  of  mind. 
He  was  pre-eminently  a  person  of  moods,  dependent,  probably, 
as  all  moods  are,  on  certain  obscure  physical  variations.  And 
his  mental  temperature  had  run  down  in  the  night.  The  house, 
the  people  who  had  been  fresh  and  interesting  to  him  twelve 
hours  before,  were  now  the  burden  he  had  more  than  half 
expected  them  to  be.  He  lay  and  thought  of  the  unbroken 
solitude  of  his  college  rooms,  of  Senancour  s  flight  from  human 
kind,  of  the  uselessness  of  all  friendship,  the  absurdity  of  all 
effort,  and  could  hardly  persuade  himself  to  get  up  and  face  a 
futile  world,  which  had,  moreover,  the  enormous  disadvantage 
for  the  moment  of  being  a  new  one. 

Convention,  however,  is  master  even  of  an  Obermann.  That 
prototype  of  all  the  disillusioned  had  to  cut  himself  adrift  from 
the  society  of  the  eagles  on  the  Dent  du  Midi,  to  go  and  hang 
like  any  other  ridiculous  mortal  on  the  Paris  law-courts.  Lang- 
ham,  whether  he  liked  it  or  no,  had  to  face  the  parsonic  break- 
fast and  the  parsonic  day. 

He  had  just  finished  dressing  when  the  sound  of  a  girl's  voice 
drew  him  to  the  window,  which  was  open.  In  the  garden  stood 
Rose,  on  the  edge  of  the  sunk  fence  dividing  the  rectory  domain 


CHAP,  xii  SURREY  173 

from  the  cornfield.  She  was  stooping  forward  playing  with 
Robert's  Dandie  Dinmont.  In  one  hand  she  held  a  mass  of 
poppies,  which  showed  a  vivid  scarlet  against  her  blue  dress ; 
the  other  was  stretched  out  seductively  to  the  dog  leaping 
round  her.  A  crystal  buckle  flashed  at  her  waist ;  the  sunshine 
caught  the  curls  of  auburn  hair,  the  pink  cheek,  the  white 
moving  hand,  the  lace  ruffles  at  her  throat  and  wrist.  The 
lithe  glittering  figure  stood  thrown  out  against  the  heavy 
woods  behind,  the  gold  of  the  cornfield,  the  blues  of  the  distance. 
All  the  gaiety  and  colour  which  is  as  truly  representative  of 
autumn  as  the  gray  languor  of  a  September  mist  had  passed 
into  it. 

Langham  stood  and  watched,  hidden,  as  he  thought,  by  the 
curtain,  till  a  gust  of  wind  shook  the  casement  window  beside 
him,  and  threatened  to  blow  it  in  upon  him.  He  put  out  his 
hand  perforce  to  save  it,  and  the  slight  noise  caught  Hose's  ear. 
She  looked  up ;  her  smile  vanished.  '  Go  down,  Dandie,'  she 
said  severely,  and  walked  quickly  into  the  house  with  as  much 
dignity  as  nineteen  is  capable  of. 

At  breakfast  the  Elsmeres  found  their  guest  a  difficulty.  But 
they  also,  as  we  know,  had  expected  it.  He  was  languor  itself ; 
none  of  their  conversational  efforts  succeeded  :  and  Rose,  study- 
ing him  out  of  the  corners  of  her  eyes,  felt  that  it  would  be  of 
no  use  even  to  torment  so  strange  and  impenetrable  a  being. 
Why  on  earth  should  people  come  and  visit  their  friends  if 
they  could  not  keep  up  even  the  ordinary  decent  pretences  of 
society  ? 

Robert  had  to  go  off  to  some  clerical  business  afterwards,  and 
Langham  wandered  out  into  the  garden  by  himself.  As  he 
thought  of  his  Greek  texts  and  his  untenanted  Oxford  rooms, 
he  had  the  same  sort  of  craving  that  an  opium-eater  has  cut  off 
from  his  drugs.  How  was  he  to  get  through  ? 

Presently  he  walked  back  into  the  study,  secured  an  armful 
of  volumes,  and  carried  them  out.  True  to  himself  in  the 
smallest  things,  he  could  never  in  his  life  be  content  with  the 
companionship  of  one  book.  To  cut  off  the  possibility  of  choice 
and  change  in  anything  whatever  was  repugnant  to  him. 

He  sat  himself  down  under  the  shade  of  a  great  chestnut  near 
the  house,  and  an  hour  glided  pleasantly  away.  As  it  happened, 
however,  he  did  not  open  one  of  the  books  he  had  brought  with 
him.  A  thought  had  struck  him  as  he  sat  down,  and  he  went 
groping  in  his  pockets  in  search  of  a  yellow-covered  brochure, 
which,  when  found,  proved  to  be  a  new  play  by  Dumas,  just 
about  to  be  produced  by  a  French  company  in  London.  Lang- 
ham,  whose  passion  for  the  French  theatre  supplied  him,  as  we 
know,  with  a  great  deal  of  life  without  the  trouble  of  living,  was 
going  to  see  it,  and  always  made  a  point  of  reading  the  piece 
beforehand. 

The  play  turned  upon  a  typical  French  situation,  treated  in 
a  manner  rather  more  French  than  usual.  The  reader  shrugged 


174  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

his  shoulders  a  good  deal  as  he  read  on.  '  Strange  nation  ! '  he 
muttered  to  himself  after  an  act  or  two.  '  How  they  do  revel 
in  mud ! ' 

Presently,  just  as  the  fifth  act  was  beginning  to  get  hold  of 
him  with  that  force  which,  after  all,  only  a  French  playwright 
is  master  of,  he  looked  up  and  saw  the  two  sisters  coming  round 
the  corner  of  the  house  from  the  great  kitchen  garden,  which 
stretched  its  grass  paths  and  tangled  flower-masses  down  the 
further  slope  of  the  hill.  The  transition  was  sharp  from  Dumas's 
heated  atmosphere  of  passion  and  crime  to  the  quiet  English 
rectory,  its  rural  surroundings,  and  the  figures  of  the  two 
Englishwomen  advancing  towards  him. 

Catherine  was  in  a  loose  white  dress  with  a  black  lace  scarf 
draped  about  her  head  and  form.  Her  look  hardly  suggested 
youth,  and  there  was  certainly  no  touch  of  age  in  it.  Ripeness, 
maturity,  serenity — these  were  the  chief  ideas  which  seemed  to 
rise  in  the  mind  at  sight  of  her. 

'  Are  you  amusing  yourself,  Mr.  Langham  ? '  she  said,  stop- 

glng  beside  him  and  retaining  with  slight  imperceptible  force 
ose's  hand,  which  threatened  to  slip  away. 

'  Very  much.  I  have  been  skimming  through  a  play,  which 
I  hope  to  see  next  week,  by  way  of  preparation.' 

Rose  turned  involuntarily.  Not  wishing  to  discuss  Marianne 
with  either  Catherine  or  her  sister,  Langham  had  just  closed 
the  book  and  was  returning  it  to  his  pocket.  But  she  had 
caught  sight  of  it. 

'You  are  reading  Marianne,'  she  exclaimed,  the  slightest 
possible  touch  of  wonder  in  her  tone. 

'  Yes,  it  is  Marianne,'  said  Langham,  surprised  in  his  turn. 
He  had  very  old-fashioned  notions  about  the  limits  of  a  girl's 
acquaintance  with  the  world,  knowing  nothing,  therefore,  as 
may  be  supposed,  about  the  modern  young  woman,  and  he  was 
a  trifle  scandalised  by  Rose's  accent  of  knowledge. 

'  I  read  it  last  week,'  she  said  carelessly ;  '  and  the  Piersons ' 
— turning  to  her  sister — 'have  promised  to  take  me  to  see  it 
next  winter  if  Desforets  comes  again,  as  every  one  expects.' 

'Who  wrote  it?'  asked  Catherine  innocently.  The  theatre 
not  only  gave  her  little  pleasure,  but  wounded  in  her  a  hundred 
deep  unconquerable  instincts.  But  she  had  long  ago  given  up 
in  despair  the  hope  of  protesting  against  Rose  s  dramatic  in- 
stincts with  success. 

' Dumas fils'  said  Langham  drily.  He  was  distinctly  a  good 
deal  astonished. 

Rose  looked  at  him,  and  something  brought  a  sudden  flame 
into  her  cheek. 

'  It  is  one  of  the  best  of  his,'  she  said  defiantly.  '  I  have  read 
a  good  many  others.  Mrs.  Pierson  lent  me  a  volume.  And 
when  I  was  introduced  to  Madame  Desfor£ts  last  week,  she 
agreed  with  me  that  Marianne  is  nearly  the  best  of  all.' 

All  this,  of  course,  with  the  delicate  nose  well  in  air. 


CHAP,  xii  SURREY  175 

'  You  were  introduced  to  Madame  Desfprets  ? '  cried  Langham, 
surprised  this  time  quite  out  of  discretion.  Catherine  looked 
at  him  with  anxiety.  The  reputation  of  the  black-eyed  little 
French  actress,  who  had  been  for  a  year  or  two  the  idol  of  the 
theatrical  public  of  Paris  and  London,  had  reached  even  to  her, 
and  the  tone  of  Langham's  exclamation  struck  her  painfully. 

'  I  was,'  said  Hose  proudly.  '  Other  people  may  think  it  a 
disgrace.  /  thought  it  an  honour  ! ' 

Langham  could  not  help  smiling,  the  girl's  naivete  was  so 
evident.  It  was  clear  that,  if  she  had  read  Marianne,  she  had 
never  understood  it. 

'  Rose,  you  don't  know  ! '  exclaimed  Catherine,  turning  to  her 
sister  with  a  sudden  trouble  in  her  eyes.  '  I  don't  think  Mrs. 
Pierson  ought  to  have  done  that,  without  consulting  mamma 
especially.' 

'  Why  not  ? '  cried  Rose  vehemently.  Her  face  was  burning, 
and  her  heart  was  full  of  something  like  hatred  of  Langham, 
but  she  tried  hard  to  be  calm. 

'I  think,'  she  said,  with  a  desperate  attempt  at  crushing 
dignity,  '  that  the  way  in  which  all  sorts  of  stories  are  believed 
against  a  woman,  just  because  she  is  an  actress,  is  disgraceful ! 
Just  because  a  woman  is  on  the  stage,  everybody  thinks  they 
may  throw  stones  at  her.  I  know,  because — because  she  told 
me,'  cried  the  speaker,  growing,  however,  half  embarrassed  as 
she  spoke,  '  that  she  feels  the  things  that  are  said  of  her  deeply  ! 
She  has  been  ill,  very  ill,  and  one  of  her  friends  said  to  me, 
"  You  know  it  isn't  her  work,  or  a  cold,  or  anything  else  that's 
made  her  ill — it's  calumny  !  "  And  so  it  is.' 

The  speaker  flashed  an  angry  glance  at  Langham.  She  was 
sitting  on  the  arm  of  the  cane  chair  into  which  Catherine  had 
fallen,  one  hand  grasping  the  back  of  the  chair  for  support,  one 
pointed  foot  beating  the  ground  restlessly  in  front  of  her,  her 
small  full  mouth  pursed  indignantly,  the  greenish -gray  eyes 
flashing  and  brilliant. 

As  for  Langham,  the  cynic  within  him  was  on  the  point  of 
uncontrollable  laughter.  Madame  Desforets  complaining  of 
calumny  to  this  little  Westmoreland  maiden  !  But  his  eyes 
involuntarily  met  Catherine's,  and  the  expression  of  both  fused 
into  a  common  wonderment— amused  on  his  side,  anxious  on 
hers.  '  What  a  child,  what  an  infant  it  is  ! '  they  seemed  to 
confide  to  one  another.  Catherine  laid  her  hand  softly  on 
Rose's,  and  was  about  to  say  something  soothing,  which  might 
secure  her  an  opening  for  some  sisterly  advice  later  on,  when 
there  was  a  sound  of  calling  from  the  gate.  She  looked  up  and 
saw  Robert  waving  to  her.  Evidently  he  had  just  run  up  from 
the  school  to  deliver  a  message.  She  hurried  across  the  drive 
to  him  and  afterwards  into  the  house,  while  he  disappeared. 

Rose  got  up  from  her  perch  on  the  armchair  and  would  have 
followed,  but  a  movement  of  obstinacy  or  Quixotic  wrath,  or 
both,  detained  her. 


176  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

'At  any  rate,  Mr.  Langham,'  she  said,  drawing  herself  up, 
and  speaking  with  the  most  lofty  accent,  '  if  you  don't  know 
anything  personally  about  Madame  Desforets,  I  think  it  would 
be  much  fairer  to  say  nothing — and  not  to  assume  at  once  that 
all  you  hear  is  true  ! ' 

Langham  had  rarely  felt  more  awkward  than  he  did  then, 
as  he  sat  leaning  forward  under  the  tree,  this  slim  indignant 
creature  standing  over  him,  and  his  consciousness  about  equally 
divided  between  a  sense  of  her  absurdity  and  a  sense  of  her 
prettiness. 

'  You  are  an  advocate  worth  having,  Miss  Leyburn;'  he  said 
at  last,  an  enigmatical  smile  he  could  not  restrain  playing  about 
his  mouth.  '  I  could  not  argue  with  you  ;  I  had  better  not  try.' 

Rose  looked  at  him,  at  his  dark  regular  face,  at  the  black  eyes 
which  were  much  vivider  than  usual,  perhaps  because  they 
could  not  help  reflecting  some  of  the  irrepressible  memories  of 
Madame  Desforets  and  her  causes  cdlebres  which  were  cours- 
ing through  the  brain  behind  them,  and  with  a  momentary 
impression  of  rawness,  defeat,  and  yet  involuntary  attraction, 
which  galled  her  intolerably,  she  turned  away  and  left  him. 

In  the  afternoon  Robert  was  still  unavailable,  to  his  own 
great  chagrin,  and  Langham  summoned  up  all  his  resignation 
and  walked  with  the  ladies.  The  general  impression  left  upon 
his  mind  by  the  performance  was,  first,  that  the  dust  of  an 
English  August  is  intolerable,  and,  secondly,  that  women's 
society  ought  only  to  be  ventured  on  by  the  men  who  are  made 
for  it.  The  views  of  Catherine  and  Rose  may  be  deduced  from 
his  with  tolerable  certainty. 

But  in  the  late  afternoon,  when  they  thought  they  had  done 
their  duty  by  him,  and  he  was  again  alone  in  the  garden  read- 
ing, he  suddenly  heard  the  sounds  of  music. 

Who  was  playing,  and  in  that  way  ?  He  got  up  and  strolled 
past  the  drawing-room  window  to  find  out. 

Rose  had  got  hold  of  an  accompanist,  the  timid  dowdy  daughter 
of  a  local  solicitor,  with  some  capacity  for  reading,  and  was  now, 
in  her  lavish  impetuous  fashion,  rushing  through  a  quantity 
of  new  music,  the  accumulations  of  her  visit  to  London.  She 
stood  up  beside  the  piano,  her  hair  gleaming  in  the  shadow  of 
the  drawing-room,  her  white  brow  hanging  forward  over  her 
violin  as  she  peered  her  way  through  the  music,  her  whole  soul 
absorbed  in  what  she  was  doing.  Langham  passed  unnoticed. 

What  astonishing  playing  !  Why  had  no  one  warned  him  of 
the  presence  of  such  a  gift  in  this  dazzling,  prickly,  unripe 
creature  1  He  sat  down  against  the  wall  of  the  house,  as  close 
as  possible,  but  out  of  sight,  and  listened.  All  the  romance  of 
his  spoilt  and  solitary  life  had  come  to  him  so  far  through 
music,  and  through  such  music  as  this !  For  she  was  play- 
ing Wagner,  Brahms,  and  Rubinstein,  interpreting  all  those 
passionate  voices  of  the  subtlest  moderns,  through  which  the 


CHAP,  xni  SURREY  177 

heart  of  our  own  day  has  expressed  itself  even  more  freely  and 
exactly  than  through  the  voice  of  literature.  Hans  Sachs'  im- 
mortal song,  echoes  from  the  love  duets  in  '  Tristan  und  Isolde,' 
fragments  from  a  wild  and  alien  dance-music,  they  rippled  over 
him  in  a  warm  intoxicating  stream  of  sound,  stirring  associa- 
tion after  association,  and  rousing  from  sleep  a  hundred  bygone 
moods  of  feeling. 

What  magic  and  mastery  in  the  girl's  touch  !  What  power 
of  divination,  and  of  rendering !  Ah !  she  too  was  floating  in 
passion  and  romance,  but  of  a  different  sort  altogether  from  the 
conscious  reflected  product  of  the  man's  nature.  She  was  not 
thinking  of  the  past,  but  of  the  future ;  she  was  weaving  her 
story  that  was  to  be  into  the  flying  notes,  playing  to  the  un- 
known of  her  Whindale  dreams,  the  strong  ardent  unknown, — 
'  insufferable,  if  he  pleases,  to  all  the  world  besides,  but  to  me 
heaven  ! '  She  had  caught  no  breath  yet  of  his  coming,  but  her 
heart  was  ready  for  him. 

Suddenly,  as  she  put  down  her  violin,  the  French  window 
opened,  and  Langham  stood  before  her.  She  looked  at  him 
with  a  quick  stiffening  of  the  face  which  a  minute  before  had 
been  all  quivering  and  relaxed,  and  his  instant  perception  of  it 
chilled  the  impulse  which  had  brought  him  there. 

He  said  something  banal  about  his  enjoyment,  something 
totally  different  from  what  he  had  meant  to  say.  The  moment 
presented  itself,  but  he  could  not  seize  it  or  her. 

'  I  had  no  notion  you  cared  for  music,'  she  said  carelessly,  as 
she  shut  the  piano,  and  then  she  went  away. 

Langham  felt  a  strange  fierce  pang  of  disappointment. 
What  had  he  meant  to  do  or  say1?  Idiot!  What  common 
ground  was  there  between  him  and  any  such  exquisite  youth  ? 
What  girl  would  ever  see  in  him  anything  but  the  dull  remains 
of  what  once  had  been  a  man  ! 


CHAPTEK  XIH 

THE  next  day  was  Sunday.  Langham,  who  was  as  depressed 
and  home-sick  as  ever,  with  a  certain  new  spice  of  restlessness, 
not  altogether  intelligible  to  himself,  thrown  in,  could  only 
brace  himself  to  the  prospect  by  the  determination  to  take  the 
English  rural  Sunday  as  the  subject  of  severe  scientific  investi- 
gation. He  would  '  do  it '  thoroughly. 

So  he  donned  a  black  coat  and  went  to  church  with  the  rest. 
There,  in  spite  of  his  boredom  with  the  whole  proceeding, 
Robert's  old  tutor  was  a  good  deal  more  interested  by  Robert's 
sermon  than  he  had  expected  to  be.  It  was  on  the  character  of 
David,  and  there  was  a  note  in  it,  a  note  of  historical  imagina- 
tion, a  power  of  sketching  in  a  background  of  circumstance, 
and  of  biting  into  the  mind  of  the  listener,  as  it  were,  by  a  detail 

N 


178  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

or  an  epithet,  which  struck  Langham  as  something  new  in  his 
experience  of  Elsmere.  He  followed  it  at  first  as  one  might 
watch  a  game  of  skill,  enjoying  the  intellectual  form  of  it,  and 
counting  the  good  points,  but  by  the  end  he  was  not  a  little 
carried  away.  The  peroration  was  undoubtedly  very  moving, 
very  intimate,  very  modern,  and  Langham  up  to  a  certain 
point  was  extremely  susceptible  to  oratory,  as  he  was  to  music 
and  acting.  The  critical  judgment,  however,  at  the  root  of 
him  kept  coolly  repeating  as  he  stood  watching  the  people  defile 
out  of  the  church  :  '  This  sort  of  thing  will  go  down,  will  make 
a  mark  ;  Elsmere  is  at  the  beginning  of  a  career  !' 

In  the  afternoon  Robert,  who  was  feeling  deeply  guilty 
towards  his  wife,  in  that  he  had  been  forced  to  leave  so  much  of 
the  entertainment  of  Langham  to  her,  asked  his  old  friend  to 
come  for  him  to  the  school  at  four  o'clock  and  take  him  for  a 
walk  between  two  engagements.  Langham  was  punctual,  and 
Robert  carried  him  off  first  to  see  the  Sunday  cricket,  which  was 
in  full  swing.  During  the  past  year  the  young  rector  had  been 
developing  a  number  of  outdoor  capacities  which  were  probably 
always  dormant  in  his  Elsmere  blood,  the  blood  of  generations 
of  country  gentlemen,  but  which  had  never  had  full  opportunity 
before.  He  talked  of  fishing  as  Kingsley  might  have  talked  of 
it,  and,  indeed,  with  constant  quotations  from  Kingsley ;  and 
his  cricket,  which  had  been  good  enough  at  Oxford  to  get  him 
into  his  College  eleven,  had  stood  him  in  specially  good  stead 
with  the  Murewell  villagers.  That  his  play  was  not  elegant 
they  were  not  likely  to  find  out ;  his  bowling  they  set  small 
store  by ;  but  his  batting  was  of  a  fine,  slashing,  superior  sort 
which  soon  carried  the  Murewell  Club  to  a  much  higher  position 
among  the  clubs  of  the  neighbourhood  than  it  had  ever  yet 
aspired  to  occupy. 

The  rector  had  no  time  to  play  on  Sundays,  however,  and, 
after  they  had  hung  about  the  green  a  little  while,  he  took  his 
friend  over  to  the  Workmen's  Institute,  which  stood  at  the  edge 
of  it.  He  explained  that  the  Institute  had  been  the  last  achieve- 
ment of  the  agent  before  Henslowe,  a  man  who  had  done  his 
duty  to  the  estate  according  to  his  lights,  and  to  whom  it  was 
owing  that  those  parts  of  it,  at  any  rate,  which  were  most  in 
the  public  eye,  were  still  in  fair  condition. 

The  Institute  was  now  in  bad  repair  and  too  small  for  the 
place.  '  But  catch  that  man  doing  anything  for  us  ! '  exclaimed 
Robert  hotly.  'He  will  hardly  mend  the  roof  now,  merely,  I 
believe,  to  spite  me.  But  come  and  see  my  new  Naturalists' 
Club.' 

And  he  opened  the  Institute  door.  Langham  followed  in 
the  temper  of  one  getting  up  a  subject  for  examination. 

Poor  Robert !  His  labour  and  his  enthusiasm  deserved  a 
more  appreciative  eye.  He  was  wrapped  up  in  his  Club,  which 
had  been  the  great  success  of  his  first  year,  and  he  dragged 
Langham  through  it  all,  not  indeed,  sympathetic  creature  that  he 


CHAP,  xni  SURREY  179 

was,  without  occasional  qualms.  '  But  after  all,'  he  would  say 
to  himself  indignantly,  '  I  must  do  something  with  him.' 

Langham,  indeed,  behaved  with  resignation.  He  looked  at 
the  collections  for  the  year,  and  was  quite  ready  to  take  it  for 
granted  that  they  were  extremely  creditable.  Into  the  old- 
fashioned  window-sills  glazed  compartments  had  been  fitted, 
and  these  were  now  fairly  filled  with  specimens,  with  eggs, 
butterflies,  moths,  beetles,  fossils,  and  what  not.  A  case  of 
stuffed  tropical  birds  presented  by  Robert  stood  in  the  centre  of 
the  room  ;  another  containing  the  birds  of  the  district  was  close 
by.  On  a  table  farther  on  stood  two  large  open  books,  which 
served  as  records  of  observations  on  the  part  of  members  of  the 
Club.  In  one,  which  was  scrawled  over  with  mysterious  hiero- 
glyphs, any  one  might  write  what  he  would.  In  the  other,  only 
such  facts  and  remarks  as  had  passed  the  gauntlet  of  a  Club 
meeting  were  recorded  in  Robertas  neatest  hand.  On  the  same 
table  stood  jars  full  of  strange  creatures — tadpoles  and  water 
larvae  of  all  kinds,  over  which  Robert  hung  now  absorbed, 
poking  among  them  with  a  straw,  while  Langham,  to  whom 
only  the  generalisations  of  science  were  congenial,  stood  by  and 
mildly  scoffed. 

As  they  came  out  a  great  loutish  boy,  who  had  evidently  been 
hanging  about  waiting  for  the  rector,  came  up  to  him,  boorishly 
touched  his  cap,  and  then,  taking  a  cardboard  box  out  of  his 
pocket,  opened  it  with  infinite  caution,  something  like  a  tremor 
of  emotion  passing  over  his  gnarled  countenance. 

The  rector's  eyes  glistened. 

'  Hullo !  I  say,  Irwin,  where  in  the  name  of  fortune  did 
you  get  that  ?  You  lucky  fellow !  Come  in,  and  let's  look 
it  out!' 

And  the  two  plunged  back  into  the  Club  together,  leaving 
Langham  to  the  philosophic  and  patient  contemplation  of  the 
village  green,  its  geese,  its  donkeys,  and  its  surrounding  fringe 
of  houses.  He  felt  that  quite  indisputably  life  would  have 
been  better  worth  living  if,  like  Robert,  he  could  have  taken  a 
passionate  interest  in  rare  moths  or  common  ploughboys  :  but 
Nature  having  denied  him  the  possibility,  there  was  small  use 
in  grumbling. 

Presently  the  two  naturalists  came  out  again,  and  the  boy 
went  off,  bearing  his  treasure  with  him. 

'  Lucky  dog  ! '  said  Robert,  turning  his  friend  into  a  country 
road  leading  out  of  the  village,  'hes  found  one  of  the  rarest 
moths  of  the  district.  Such  a  hero  he'll  be  in  the  Club  to-morrow 
night.  It's  extraordinary  what  a  rational  interest  has  done 
for  that  fellow  !  I  nearly  fought  him  in  public  last  winter.' 

And  he  turned  to  his  friend  with  a  laugh,  and  yet  with  a 
little  quick  look  of  feeling  in  the  gray  eyes. 

'  Magnificent,  but  not  war,'  said  Langham  drily.  '  I  wouldn't 
have  given  much  for  your  chances  against  those  shoulders.' 

'Oh,  I  don't  know.     I  should  have  had  a  little  science  on  my 


180  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

side,  which  counts  for  a  great  deal.  We  turned  him  out  of  the 
Club  for  brutality  towards  the  old  grandmother  he  lives  with — 
turned  him  out  in  public.  Such  a  scene  !  I  shall  never  forget 
the  boy's  face.  It  was  like  a  corpse,  and  the  eyes  burning  out 
of  it.  He  made  for  me,  but  the  others  closed  up  round,  and  we 
got  him  put  out.' 

'  Hard  lines  on  the  grandmother,'  remarked  Langham. 

'  She  thought  so — poor  old  thing  !  She  left  her  cottage  that 
night,  thinking  he  would  murder  her,  and  went  to  a  friend.  At 
the  end  of  a  week  he  came  into  the  friend's  house,  where  she  was 
alone  in  bed.  She  cowered  under  the  bedclothes,  she  told  me, 
expecting  him  to  strike  her.  Instead  of  which  he  threw  his 
wages  down  beside  her  and  gruffly  invited  her  to  come  home. 
"  He  wouldn't  do  her  no  mischief.  Everybody  dissuaded  her, 
but  the  plucky  old  thing  went.  A  week  or  two  afterwards  she 
sent  for  me  and  I  found  her  crying.  She  was  sure  the  lad  was 
ill,  he  spoke  to  nobody  at  his  work.  "Lord,  sir  !"  she  said,  "it 
do  remind  me,  when  he  sits  glowering  at  nights,  of  those  folks 
in  the  Bible,  when  the  devils  inside  'em  kep'  a-tearing  'em. 
But  he's  like  a  new-born  babe  to  me,  sir — never  does  me  no  'arm. 
And  it  do  go  to  my  heart,  sir,  to  see  how  poorly  he  do  take  his 
vittles  !"  So  I  made  tracks  for  that  lad,'  said  Robert,  his  eyes 
kindling,  his  whole  frame  dilating.  '  I  found  him  in  the  fields 
one  morning.  I  have  seldom  lived  through  so  much  in  half  an 
hour.  In  the  evening  I  walked  him  up  to  the  Club,  and  we  re- 
admitted him,  and  since  then  the  boy  has  been  like  one  clothed 
and  in  his  right  mind.  If  there  is  any  trouble  in  the  Club  I 
set  him  on,  and  he  generally  puts  it  right.  And  when  I  was 
laid  up  with  a  chill  in  the  spring,  and  the  poor  fellow  came 
trudging  up  every  night  after  his  work  to  ask  for  me — well, 
never  mind !  but  it  gives  one  a  good  glow  at  one's  heart  to 
think  about  it.' 

The  speaker  threw  back  his  head  impulsively,  as  though 
defying  his  own  feeling.  Langham  looked  at  him  curiously. 
The  pastoral  temper  was  a  novelty  to  him,  and  the  strong 
development  of  it  in  the  undergraduate  of  his  Oxford  recollec- 
tions had  its  interest. 

'  A  quarter  to  six,'  said  Robert,  as  on  their  return  from  their 
walk  they  were  descending  a  low- wooded  hill  above  the  village, 
and  the  church  clock  rang  out.  '  I  must  hurry,  or  I  shall  be  late 
for  my  story-telling.' 

'  Story-telling  ! '  said  Langham,  with  a  half -exasperated  shrug. 
'  What  next  ?  You  clergy  are  too  inventive  by  half  ! ' 

Robert  laughed  a  trifle  bitterly. 

'  I  can't  congratulate  you  on  your  epithets,'  he  said,  thrusting 
his  hands  far  into  his  pockets.  '  Good  heavens,  if  we  were — if 
we  were  inventive  as  a  body,  the  Church  wouldn't  be  where  she 
is  in  the  rural  districts  !  My  story-telling  is  the  simplest  thing 
in  the  world.  I  began  it  in  the  winter  with  the  object  of  some- 
how or  other  getting  at  the  imagination  of  these  rustics.  Force 


CHAP,  xin  SURREY  181 

them  for  only  half  an  hour  to  live  some  one  else's  life — it  is  the 
one  thing  worth  doing  with  them.  That's  what  I  have  been 
aiming  at.  I  told  my  stories  all  the  winter — Shakespeare, 
Don  Quixote,  Dumas  —  Heaven  knows  what !  And  on  the 
whole  it  answers  best.  But  now  we  are  reading  The  Talis- 
man. Come  and  inspect  us,  unless  you're  a  purist  about  your 
Scott !  None  other  of  the  immortals  have  such  longueurs  as  he, 
and  we  cut  him  freely.' 

'  By  all  means,'  said  Langham  ;  '  lead  on.'  And  he  followed 
his  companion  without  repugnance.  After  all,  there  was  some- 
thing contagious  in  so  much  youth  and  hopefulness. 

The  story -telling  was  held  in  the  Institute. 

A  group  of  men  and  boys  were  hanging  round  the  door  when 
they  reached  it.  The  two  friends  made  their  way  through, 
greeted  in  the  dumb  friendly  English  fashion  on  all  sides,  and 
Langham  found  himself  in  a  room  half-filled  with  boys  and 
youths,  a  few  grown  men,  who  had  just  put  their  pipes  out, 
lounging  at  the  back. 

Langham  not  only  endured,  but  enjoyed  the  first  part  of  the 
hour  that  followed.  Robert  was  an  admirable  reader,  as  most 
enthusiastic  imaginative  people  are.  He  was  a  master  of  all 
those  arts  of  look  and  gesture  which  make  a  spoken  story  telling 
and  dramatic,  and  Langham  marvelled  with  what  energy,  after 
his  hard  day's  work  and  with  another  service  before  him,  he 
was  able  to  throw  himself  into  such  a  hors  d'ceuvre  as  this.  He 
was  reading  to-night  one  of  the  most  perfect  scenes  that  even 
the  Wizard  of  the  North  has  ever  conjured :  the  scene  in  the 
tent  of  Richard  Lion-Heart,  when  the  disguised  slave  saves  the 
life  of  the  king,  and  Richard  first  suspects  his  identity.  As  he 
read  on,  his  arms  resting  on  the  high  desk  in  front  of  him,  and 
his  eyes,  full  of  infectious  enjoyment,  travelling  from  the  book 
to  his  audience,  surrounded  by  human  beings  whose  confidence 
he  had  won,  and  whose  lives  he  was  brightening  from  day  to 
day,  he  seemed  to  Langham  the  very  type  and  model  of  a  man 
who  had  found  his  metier,  found  his  niche  in  the  world,  and  the 
best  means  of  filling  it.  If  to  attain  to  an  '  adequate  and  mas- 
terly expression  of  one's  self '  be  the  aim  of  life,  Robert  was  fast 
achieving  it.  This  parish  of  twelve  hundred,  souls  gave  him 
now  all  the  scope  he  asked.  It  was  evident  that  he  felt  his 
work  to  be  rather  above  than  below  his  deserts.  He  was  con- 
tent— more  than  content — to  spend  ability  which  would  have 
distinguished  him  in  public  life,  or  carried  him  far  to  the  front 
in  literature,  on  the  civilising  of  a  few  hundred  of  England's 
rural  poor.  The  future  might  bring  him  worldly  success — 
Langham  thought  it  must  and  would.  Clergymen  of  Robert's 
stamp  are  rare  among  us.  But  if  so,  it  would  be  in  response  to 
no  conscious  effort  of  his.  Here,  in  the  country  living  he  had 
so  long  dreaded  and  put  from  him,  lest  it  should  tax  his  young 
energies  too  lightly,  he  was  happy — deeply,  abundantly  happy, 
at  peace  with  God,  at  one  with  man. 


182  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

Happy  !  Langham,  sitting  at  the  outer  corner  of  one  of  the 
benches,  by  the  open  door,  gradually  ceased  to  listen,  started  on 
other  lines  of  thought  by  this  realisation,  warm,  stimulating, 
provocative,  of  another  man's  happiness. 

Outside,  the  shadows  lengthened  across  the  green  ;  groups  of 
distant  children  or  animals  passed  in  and  out  of  the  golden 
light-spaces ;  the  patches  of  heather  left  here  and  there  glowed 
as  the  sunset  touched  them.  Every  now  and  then  his  eye 
travelled  vaguely  past  a  cottage  garden,  gay  with  the  pinks  and 
carmines  of  the  phloxes,  into  the  cool  browns  and  bluish-grays 
of  the  raftered  room  beyond ;  babies  toddled  across  the  road, 
with  stooping  mothers  in  their  train  ;  the  whole  air  and  scene 
seemed  to  be  suflused  with  suggestions  of  the  pathetic  expan- 
siveness  and  helplessness  of  human  existence,  which,  generation 
after  generation,  is  still  so  vulnerable,  so  confiding,  so  eager. 
Life  after  life  flowers  out  from  the  darkness  and  sinks  back  into 
it  again.  And  in  the  interval  what  agony,  what  disillusion  ! 
All  the  apparatus  of  a  universe  that  men  may  know  what  it  is 
to  hope  and  fail,  to  win  and  lose !  Happy  ! — in  this  world, 
'  where  men  sit  and  hear  each  other  groan.'  His  friend's  con- 
fidence only  made  Langham  as  melancholy  as  Job. 

What  was  it  based  on  ?  In  the  first  place,  on  Christianity — 
'  on  the  passionate  acceptance  of  an  exquisite  fairy  tale,'  said 
the  dreaming  spectator  to  himself,  '  which  at  the  first  honest 
challenge  of  the  critical  sense  withers  in  our  grasp  !  That 
challenge  Elsmere  has  never  given  it,  and  in  all  probability 
never  will.  No  !  A  man  sees  none  the  straighter  for  having  a 
wife  he  adores,  and  a  profession  that  suits  him,  between  him 
and  unpleasant  facts  ! ' 

In  the  evening  Langham,  with  the  usual  reaction  of  his 
afternoon  self  against  his  morning  self,  felt  that  wild  horses 
should  not  take  him  to  Church  again,  and,  with  a  longing  for 
something  purely  mundane,  he  stayed  at  home  with  a  volume  of 
Montaigne,  while  apparently  all  the  rest  of  the  household  went 
to  evening  service. 

After  a  warm  day  the  evening  had  turned  cold  and  stormy  ; 
the  west  was  streaked  with  jagged  strips  of  angry  cloud,  the 
wind  was  rising  in  the  trees,  and  the  temperature  had  suddenly 
fallen  so  much  that  when  Langham  shut  himself  up  in  Robert's 
study  he  did  what  he  had  been  admonished  to  do  in  case  of 
need,  set  a  light  to  the  fire,  which  blazed  out  merrily  into  the 
darkening  room.  Then  he  drew  the  curtains  and  threw  him- 
self down  into  Robert's  chair  with  a  sigh  of  Sybaritic  satisfac- 
tion. '  Good !  Now  for  something  that  takes  the  world  less 
naively,'  he  said  to  himself  ;  '  this  house  is  too  virtuous  for 
anything.' 

He  opened  his  Montaigne  and  read  on  very  happily  for  half 
an  hour.  The  house  seemed  entirely  deserted. 

'  All  the  servants  gone  too  ! '   he  said  presently,  looking  up 


CHAP,  xni  SURREY  183 

and  listening.  '  Anybody  who  wants  the  spoons  needn't  trouble 
about  me.  I  don't  leave  this  fire.' 

And  he  plunged  back  again  into  his  book.  At  last  there  was 
a  sound  or  the  swing  door  which  separated  Robert's  passage 
from  the  front  hall  opening  and  shutting.  Steps  came  quickly 
towards  the  study,  the  handle  was  turned,  and  there  on  the 
threshold  stood  Rose. 

He  turned  quickly  round  in  his  chair  with  a  look  of  astonish- 
ment. She  also  started  as  she  saw  him. 

'  I  did  not  know  any  one  was  in,'  she  said  awkwardly,  the 
colour  spreading  over  her  face.  '  I  came  to  look  for  a  book.' 

She  made  a  delicious  picture  as  she  stood  framed  in  the  dark- 
ness of  the  doorway?  her  long  dress  caught  up  round  her  in  one 
hand,  the  other  resting  on  the  handle.  A  gust  of  some  delicate 
perfume  seemed  to  enter  the  room  with  her,  and  a  thrill  of 
pleasure  passed  through  Langham's  senses. 

'  Can  I  find  anything  for  you  ? '  he  said,  springing  up. 

She  hesitated  a  moment,  then  apparently  made  up  her  mind 
that  it  would  be  foolish  to  retreat,  and,  coming  forward,  she 
said,  with  an  accent  as  coldly  polite  as  she  could  make  it, — 

'Pray  don't  disturb  yourself.    I  know  exactly  where  to  find  it.' 

She  went  up  to  the  shelves  where  Robert  kept  his  novels, 
and  began  running  her  fingers  over  the  books,  with  slightly 
knitted  brows  and  a  mouth  severely  shut.  Langham,  still 
standing,  watched  her  and  presently  stepped  forward. 

'  You  can't  reach  those  upper  shelves,'  he  said  ;  '  plea,se 
let  me.' 

He  was  already  beside  her,  and  she  gave  way. 

'  I  want  diaries,  Aucliest&rj  she  said,  still  forbiddingly.  '  It 
ought  to  be  there.' 

'  Oh,  that  queer  musical  novel — I  know  it  quite  well.  No 
sign  of  it  here,'  and  he  ran  over  the  shelves  with  the  practised 
eye  of  one  accustomed  to  deal  with  books. 

'Robert  must  have  lent  it,'  said  Rose,  with  a  little  sigh. 
'  Never  mind,  please.  It  doesn't  matter,'  and  she  was  already 
moving  away. 

'  Try  some  other  instead,'  he  said,  smiling,  his  arm  still  up- 
stretched.  '  Robert  has  no  lack  of  choice.'  His  manner  had  an 
animation  and  ease  usually  quite  foreign  to  it.  Rose  stopped, 
and  her  lips  relaxed  a  little. 

'  lie  is  very  nearly  as  bad  as  the  novel-reading  bishop,  who 
was  reduced  at  last  to  stealing  the  servant's  Family  Herald 
out  of  the  kitchen  cupboard,'  she  said,  a  smile  dawning. 

Langham  laughed. 

'  Has  he  such  an  episcopal  appetite  for  them  ?  That  accounts 
for  the  fact  that  when  he  and  I  begin  to  talk  novels  I  am  always 
nowhere.' 

'  I  shouldn't  have  supposed  you  ever  read  them,'  said  Rose, 
obeying  an  irresistible  impulse,  and  biting  her  lip  the  moment 
afterwards. 


184  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

'Do  you  think  that  we  poor  people  at  Oxford  are  always 
condemned  to  works  on  the  "  enclitic  dt"1'  he  asked,  his  fine 
eyes  lit  up  with  gaiety,  and  his  head,  of  which  the  Greek  out- 
lines were  ordinarily  so  much  disguised  by  his  stoop  and 
hesitating  look,  thrown  back  against  the  books  behind  him. 

Natures  like  Langham's,  in  which  the  nerves  are  never 
normal,  have  their  moments  of  felicity,  balancing  their  weeks 
of  timidity  and  depression.  After  his  melancholy  of  the  last 
two  days  the  tide  of  reaction  had  been  mounting  within  him, 
and  the  sight  of  Rose  had  carried  it  to  its  height. 

She  gave  a  little  involuntary  stare  of  astonishment.  What 
had  happened  to  Robert's  silent  and  finicking  friend  ? 

'I  know  nothing  of  Oxford,'  she  said  a  little  primly,  in 
answer  to  his  question.  '  I  never  was  there — but  I  never  was 
anywhere,  I  have  seen  nothing,'  she  added  hastily,  and,  as  Lang- 
ham  thought,  bitterly. 

'Except  London,  and  the  great  world,  and  Madame  Des- 
f orets  ! '  he  answered,  laughing.  '  Is  that  so  little  1 ' 

She  flashed  a  quick  defiant  look  at  him,  as  he  mentioned 
Madame  Desforets,  but  his  look  was  imperturbably  kind  and 
gay.  She  could  not  help  softening  towards  him.  What  magic 
had  passed  over  him  ? 

'  Do  you  know,'  said  Langham,  moving,  '  that  you  are  stand- 
ing in  a  draught,  and  that  it  has  turned  extremely  cold  ? ' 

For  she  had  left  the  passage-door  wide  open  behind  her,  and 
as  the  window  was  partially  open  the  curtains  were  swaying 
hither  and  thither,  and  her  muslin  dress  was  being  blown  in 
coils  round  her  feet. 

'  So  it  has,'  said  Rose,  shivering.  '  I  don't  envy  the  Church 
people.  You  haven't  found  me  a  book,  Mr.  Langham  ? ' 

'  I  will  find  you  one  in  a  minute,  if  you  will  come  and  read 
it  by  the  fire,'  he  said,  with  his  hand  on  the  door. 

She  glanced  at  the  fire  and  at  him,  irresolute.  His  breath 
quickened.  She  too  had  passed  into  another  phase.  Was  it  the 
natural  effect  of  night,  of  solitude,  of  sex?  At  any  rate,  she 
sank  softly  into  the  armchair  opposite  to  that  in  which  he  had 
been  sitting. 

'  Find  me  an  exciting  one,  please.' 

Langham  shut  the  door  securely,  and  went  back  to  the  book- 
case, his  hand  trembling  a  little  as  it  passed  along  the  books. 
He  found  Villette  and  offered  it  to  her.  She  took  it,  opened  it, 
and  appeared  deep  in  it  at  once.  He  took  the  hint  and  went 
back  to  his  Montaigne. 

The  fire  crackled  cheerfully,  the  wind  outside  made  every 
now  and  then  a  sudden  gusty  onslaught  on  their  silence,  dying 
away  again  as  abruptly  as  it  had  risen.  Rose  turned  the  pages 
of  her  book,  sitting  a  little  stiffly  in  her  long  chair,  and  Lang- 
ham  gradually  began  to  find  Montaigne  impossible  to  read.  He 
became  instead  more  and  more  alive  to  every  detail  of  the 
situation  into  which  he  had  fallen.  At  last  seeing,  or  imagining, 


CHAP,  xni  SURREY  185 

that  the  fire  wanted  attending  to,  he  bent  forward  and  thrust 
the  poker  into  it.  A  burning  coal  fell  on  the  hearth,  and  Rose 
hastily  withdrew  her  foot  from  the  fender  and  looked  up. 

'  I  am  so  sorry  ! '  he  interjected.  '  Coals  never  do  what 
you  want  them  to  do.  Are  you  very  much  interested  in 
Villette?' 

'  Deeply,'  said  Rose,  letting  the  book,  however,  drop  on  her 
lap.  She  laid  back  her  head  with  a  little  sigh,  which  she  did 
her  best  to  check2  half  way  through.  What  ailed  her  to-night  ? 
She  seemed  wearied ;  for  the  moment  there  was  no  fight  in  her 
with  anybody.  Her  music,  her  beauty,  her  mutinous  mocking 
gaiety — these  things  had  all  worked  on  the  man  beside  her ; 
but  this  new  softness,  this  touch  of  childish  fatigue,  was 
adorable. 

'  Charlotte  Bronte  wrote  it  out  of  her  Brussels  experience, 
didn't  she  1 '  she  resumed  languidly.  '  How  sorry  she  must  have 
been  to  come  back  to  that  dull  home  and  that  awful  brother 
after  such  a  break  ! ' 

'  There  were  reasons  more  than  one  that  must  have  made  her 
sorry  to  come  back,'  said  Langham  reflectively.  '  But  how  she 
pined  for  her  wilds  all  through !  I  am  afraid  you  don't  find 
your  wilds  as  interesting  as  she  found  hers  ? ' 

His  question  and  his  smile  startled  her. 

Her  first  impulse  was  to  take  up  her  book  again,  as  a  hint  to 
him  that  her  likings  were  no  concern  of  his.  But  something 
checked  it,  probably  the  new  brilliancy  of  that  look  of  his, 
which  had  suddenly  grown  so  personal,  so  manly.  Instead, 
Villette  slid  a  little  farther  from  her  hand,  and  her  pretty  head 
still  lay  lightly  back  against  the  cushion. 

'No,  I  dont  find  my  wilds  interesting  at  all,'  she  said  for- 
lornly. 

'  You  are  not  fond  of  the  people  as  your  sister  is  ? ' 

'Fond  of  them?'  cried  Rose  hastily.  'I  should  think  not; 
and  what  is  more,  they  don't  like  me.  It  is  quite  intolerable 
since  Catherine  left.  I  have  so  much  more  to  do  with  them. 
My  other  sister  and  I  have  to  do  all  her  work.  It  is  dreadful  to 
have  to  work  after  somebody  who  has  a  genius  for  doing  just 
what  you  do  worst.' 

The  young  girl's  hands  fell  across  one  another  with  a  little 
impatient  gesture.  Langham  had  a  movement  of  the  most 
delightful  compassion  towards  the  petulant,  childish  creature. 
It  was  as  though  their  relative  positions  had  been  in  some 
mysterious  way  reversed.  During  their  two  days  together  she 
had  been  the  superior,  and  he  had  felt  himself  at  the  mercy  of 
her  scornful  sharp-eyed  youth.  Now,  he  knew  not  how  or  why, 
Fate  seemed  to  have  restored  to  him  something  of  the  man's 
natural  advantage,  combined,  for  once,  with  the  impulse  to 
use  it. 

'  Your  sister,  I  suppose,  has  been  always  happy  in  charity  T ' 
he  said. 


186  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  u 

'  Oh  dear,  yes,'  said  Rose  irritably ;  '  anything  that  has  two 
legs  and  is  ill,  that  is  all  Catherine  wants  to  make  her  happy.' 

'And  you  want  something  quite  different,  something  more 
exciting  ?' '  he  asked,  his  diplomatic  tone  showing  that  he  felt  he 
dared  something  in  thus  pressing  her,  but  dared  it  at  least  with 
his  wits  about  him.  Rose  met  his  look  irresolutely,  a  little 
tremor  of  self-consciousness  creeping  over  her. 

'  Yes,  I  want  something  different,  she  said  in  a  low  voice  and 
paused ;  then,  raising  herself  energetically,  she  clasped  her 
hands  round  her  knees.  '  But  it  is  not  idleness  I  want.  I  want 
to  work,  but  at  things  I  was  born  for ;  I  can't  have  patience 
with  old  women,  but  I  could  slave  all  day  and  all  night  to  play 
the  violin.' 

'  You  want  to  give  yourself  up  to  study  then,  and  live  with 
musicians  ? '  he  said  quietly. 

She  shrugged  her  shoulders  by  way  of  answer,  and  began 
nervously  to  play  with  her  rings. 

That  under-self  which  was  the  work  and  the  heritage  of  her 
father  in  her,  and  which,  beneath  all  the  wilfulnesses  and  de- 
fiances of  the  other  self,  held  its  own  moral  debates  in  its  own 
way,  well  out  of  Catherine's  sight  generally,  began  to  emerge, 
wooed  into  the  light  by  his  friendly  gentleness. 

'But  it  is  all  so  difficult,  you  see,'  she  said  despairingly. 
'  Papa  thought  it  wicked  to  care  about  anything  except  religion. 
If  he  had  lived,  of  course  I  should  never  have  been  allowed  to 
study  music.  It  has  been  all  mutiny  so  far,  every  bit  of  it, 
whatever  I  have  been  able  to  do.' 

'  He  would  have  changed  with  the  times,'  said  Langham. 

'  I  know  he  would,'  cried  Rose.  '  I  have  told  Catherine  so  a 
hundred  times.  People — good  people — think  quite  differently 
about  art  now,  don't  they,  Mr.  Langham  ? ' 

She  spoke  with  perfect  naivete.  He  saw  more  and  more  of 
the  child  in  her,  in  spite  of  that  one  striking  development  of 
her  art. 

'  They  call  it  the  handmaid  of  religion,'  he  answered,  smiling. 

Rose  made  a  little  face. 

'  I  shouldn't,'  she  said,  with  frank  brevity.  '  But  then  there's 
something  else.  You  know  where  we  live — at  the  very  ends  of 
the  earth,  seven  miles  from  a  station,  in  the  very  loneliest  valley 
of  all  Westmoreland.  What's  to  be  done  with  a  fiddle  in  such 
a  place  ?  Of  course,  ever  since  papa  died  I've  just  been  plotting 
and  planning  to  get  away.  But  there's  the  difficulty,'  and  she 
crossed  one  white  finger  over  another  as  she  laid  out  her  case. 
'  That  house  where  we  live  has  been  lived  in  by  Leyburns  ever 
since — the  Flood  !  Horrid  set  they  were,  I  know,  because  I 
can't  ever  make  mamma  or  even  Catherine  talk  about  them. 
But  still,  when  papa  retired,  he  came  back  and  bought  the  old 
place  from  his  brother.  Such  a  dreadful,  dreadful  mistake ! ' 
cried  the  child,  letting  her  hands  fall  over  her  knee. 

'  Had  he  been  so  happy  there  ? ' 


CHAP,  xin  SURREY  187 

'  Happy  ! ' — and  Rose's  lip  curled.  '  His  brothers  used  to  kick 
and  cuff  him,  his  father  was  awfully  unkind  to  him,  he  never 
had  a  day's  peace  till  he  went  to  school,  and  after  he  went  to 
school  he  never  came  back  for  years  and  years  and  years, 
till  Catherine  was  fifteen.  What  could  have  made  him  so  fond 
of  it?' 

And  again  looking  despondently  into  the  fire  she  pondered 
that  far-off  perversity  of  her  father's. 

'  Blood  has  strange  magnetisms,'  said  Langham,  seized  as  he 
spoke  by  the  pensive  prettiness  of  the  bent  head  and  neck,  '  and 
they  show  themselves  in  the  oddest  ways.' 

'  Then  I  wish  they  wouldn't,'  she  said  irritably.  '  But  that 
isn't  all.  He  went  there,  not  only  because  he  loved  that  place, 
but  because  he  hated  other  places.  I  think  he  must  have  thought ' 
—and  her  voice  dropped — 'he  wasn't  going  to  live  long — he 
wasn't  well  when  he  gave  up  the  school — and  then  we  could 
grow  up  there  safe,  without  any  chance  of  getting  into  mischief. 
Catherine  says  he  thought  the  world  was  getting  very  wicked 
and  dangerous  and  irreligious2  and  that  it  comforted  him  to 
know  that  we  should  be  out  of  it.' 

Then  she  broke  off  suddenly. 

'Do  you  know,'  she  went  on  wistfully,  raising  her  beautiful 
eyes  to  her  companion,  '  after  all,  he  gave  me  my  first  violin  1 ' 

Langham  smiled. 

'  I  like  that  little  inconsequence,'  he  said. 

'  Then  of  course  I  took  to  it,  like  a  duck  to  water,  and  it  began 
to  scare  him  that  I  loved  it  so  much.  He  and  Catherine  only 
loved  religion,  and  us,  and  the  poor.  So  he  always  took  it  away 
on  Sundays.  Then  I  hated  Sundays,  and  would  never  be  good 
on  them.  One  Sunday  I  cried  myself  nearly  into  a  fit  on  the 
dining-room  floor  because  I  mightn't  have  it.  Then  he  came  in, 
and  he  took  me  up,  and  he  tied  a  Scotch  plaid  round  his  neck, 
and  he  put  me  into  it,  and  carried  me  away  right  up  on  to  the 
hills,  and  he  talked  to  me  like  an  angel.  He  asked  me  not  to 
make  him  sad  before  God  that  he  had  given  me  that  violin  ;  so 
I  never  screamed  again — on  Sundays  ! ' 

Her  companion's  eyes  were  not  quite  as  clear  as  before. 

'  Poor  little  naughty  child,'  he  said,  bending  over  to  her.  '  I 
think  your  father  must  have  been  a  man  to  be  loved.' 

She  looked  at  him,  very  near  to  weeping,  her  face  all  working 
with  a  soft  remorse. 

'  Oh,  so  he  was — so  he  was  !  If  he  had  been  hard  and  ugly 
to  us,  why,  it  would  have  been  much  easier  for  me ;  but  he  was 
so  good  !  And  there  was  Catherine  just  like  him,  always 
preaching  to  us  what  he  wished.  You  see  what  a  chain  it's 
been — what  a  weight !  And  as  I  must  struggle — must,  because 
I  was  I — to  get  back  into  the  world  on  the  other  side  of  the 
mountains,  and  do  what  all  the  dear  wicked  people  there  were 
doing,  why,  I  have  been  a  criminal  all  my  life  !  And  that  isn't 
exhilarating  always.' 


188  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

And  she  raised  her  arm  and  let  it  fall  beside  her  with  the 
quick  over-tragic  emotion  of  nineteen. 

'  I  wish  your  father  could  have  heard  you  play  as  I  heard  you 
play  yesterday,'  he  said  gently. 

She  started. 

'  Did  you  hear  me — that  Wagner  ? ' 

He  nodded,  smiling.  She  still  looked  at  him,  her  lips  slightly 
open. 

'  Do  you  want  to  know  what  I  thought  ?  I  have  heard  much 
music,  you  know.' 

He  laughed  into  her  eyes,  as  much  as  to  say,  '  I  am  not  quite 
the  mummy  you  thought  me,  after  all ! '  And  she  coloured 
slightly. 

'  I  have  heard  every  violinist  of  any  fame  in  Europe  play,  and 
play  often ;  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  with  time — and  work— 
you  might  play  as  well  as  any  of  them.' 

The  slight  flush  became  a  glow  that  spread  from  brow  to  chin. 
Then  she  gave  a  long  breath  and  turned  away,  her  face  resting 
on  her  hand. 

'  And  I  can't  help  thinking,'  he  went  on,  marvelling  inwardly 
at  his  own  r6le  of  mentor;  and  his  strange  enjoyment  of  it,  'that 
if  your  father  had  lived  till  now,  and  had  gone  with  the  times  a 
little,  as  he  must  have  gone,  he  would  have  learnt  to  take  plea- 
sure in  your  pleasure,  and  to  fit  your  gift  somehow  into  his 
scheme  of  things.' 

'  Catherine  hasn't  moved  with  the  times,'  said  Rose  dolefully. 

Langham  was  silent.  Gaucherie  seized  him  again  when  it- 
became  a  question  of  discussing  Mrs.  Elsmere,  his  own  view  was 
so  inconveniently  emphatic. 

'  And  you  think,'  she  went  on,  '  you  really  think,  without 
being  too  ungrateful  to  papa,  and  too  unkind  to  the  old  Leyburn 
ghosts ' — and  a  little  laugh  danced  through  the  vibrating  voice 
— 'I  might  try  and  get  them  to  give  up  Burwood — I  might 
struggle  to  have  my  way  1  I  shall,  of  course  I  shall !  I  never 
was  a  meek  martyr,  and  never  shall  be.  But  one  can't  help 
having  qualms,  though  one  doesn't  tell  them  to  one's  sisters  and 
cousins  and  aunts.  And  sometimes ' — she  turned  her  chin  round 
on  her  hand  and  looked  at  him  with  a  delicious  shy  impulsive- 
ness— '  sometimes  a  stranger  sees  clearer.  Do  you  think  me  a 
monster,  as  Catherine  does  ? ' 

Even  as  she  spoke  her  own  words  startled  her — the  confidence, 
the  abandonment  of  them.  But  she  held  to  them  bravely  ;  only 
her  eyelids  quivered.  She  had  absurdly  misjudged  this  man, 
and  there  was  a  warm  penitence  in  her  heart.  How  kind  he 
had  been,  how  sympathetic  ! 

He  rose  with  her  last  words,  and  stood  leaning  against  the 
mantelpiece,  looking  down  upon  her  gravely,  with  the  air,  as  it 
seemed  to  her,  of  her  friend,  her  confessor.  Her  white  childish 
brow,  the  little  curls  of  bright  hair  upon  her  temples,  her  parted 
lips,  the  pretty  folds  of  the  muslin  dress,  the  little  foot  on  the 


CHAP,  xiv  SURREY  189 

fender — every  detail  of  the  picture  impressed  itself  once  for  all. 
Langharn  will  carry  it  with  him  to  his  grave. 

'  Tell  me,'  she  said  again,  smiling  divinely,  as  though  to  en- 
courage him — '  tell  me  quite  frankly,  down  to  the  bottom,  what 
you  think  ? ' 

The  harsh  noise  of  an  opening  door  in  the  distance,  and  a 
gust  of  wind  sweeping  through  the  house,  voices  and  steps  ap- 
proaching. Rose  sprang  up,  and,  for  the  first  time  during  all  the 
latter  part  of  their  conversation,  felt  a  sharp  sense  of  embar- 
rassment. 

'  How  early  you  are,  Robert ! '  she  exclaimed,  as  the  study 
door  opened,  and  Robert's  wind-blown  head  and  tall  form, 
wrapped  in  an  Inverness  cape,  appeared  on  the  threshold.  '  Is 
Catherine  tired  ? ' 

'  Rather,'  said  Robert,  the  slightest  gleam  of  surprise  betray- 
ing itself  on  his  face.  '  She  has  gone  to  bed,  and  told  me  to  ask 
you  to  come  and  say  good-night  to  her.' 

'  You  got  my  message  about  not  coming  from  old  Martha  ? ' 
asked  Rose.  '  I  met  her  on  the  common.' 

'  Yes,  she  gave  it  us  at  the  church  door.'  He  went  out  again 
into  the  passage  to  hang  up  his  greatcoat.  She  followed,  long- 
ing to  tell  him  that  it  was  pure  accident  that  took  her  to  the 
study,  but  she  could  not  find  words  in  which  to  do  it,  and  could 
only  say  good-night  a  little  abruptly. 

'  How  tempting  that  fire  looks  ! '  said  Robert,  re-entering  the 
study.  '  Were  you  very  cold,  Langham,  before  you  lit  it  ? ' 

'  Very,'  said  Langham,  smiling,  his  arm  behind  his  head,  his 
eyes  fixed  on  the  blaze ;  '  but  I  have  been  delightfully  warm  and 
happy  since.' 


CHAPTER  XIV 

CATHERINE  stopped  beside  the  drawing-room  window  with  a 
start,  caught  by  something  she  saw  outside. 

It  was  nothing,  however,  but  the  figures  of  Rose  and  Lang- 
ham  strolling  round  the  garden.  A  bystander  would  have  been 
puzzled  by  the  sudden  knitting  of  Catherine's  brows  over  it. 

Rose  held  a  red  parasol,  which  gleamed  against  the  trees  ; 
Dandie  leapt  about  her,  but  she  was  too  busy  talking  to  take 
much  notice  of  him.  Talking,  chattering,  to  that  cold  cynic  of 
a  man,  for  whom  only  yesterday  she  had  scarcely  had  a  civil 
word  !  Catherine  felt  herself  a  prey  to  all  sorts  of  vague  un- 
reasonable alarms. 

Robert  had  said  to  her  the  night  before,  with  an  odd  look  : 
'  Wifie,  when  I  came  in  I  found  Langham  and  Rose  had  been 
spending  the  evening  together  in  the  study.  And  I  don't  know 
when  I  have  seen  Langham  so  brilliant  or  so  alive  as  in  our 
smoking  talk  just  now  I 


190  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

Catherine  had  laughed  him  to  scorn ;  but,  all  the  same,  she 
had  been  a  little  longer  going  to  sleep  than  usual.  She  felt 
herself  almost  as  much  as  ever  the  guardian  of  her  sisters,  and 
the  old  sensitive  nerve  was  set  quivering.  And  now  there  could 
be  no  question  about  it — Rose  had  changed  her  ground  towards 
Mr.  Langham  altogether.  Her  manner  at  breakfast  was  evi- 
dence enough  of  it. 

Catherine's  self -torturing  mind  leapt  on  for  an  instant  to  all 
sorts  of  horrors.  That  man  ! — and  she  and  Robert  responsible 
to  her  mother  and  her  dead  father  !  Never  !  Then  she  scolded 
herself  back  to  common  sense.  Rose  and  he  had  discovered  a 
common  subject  in  music  and  musicians.  That  would  be  quite 
enough  to  account  for  the  new-born  friendship  on  Rose's  part. 
And  in  five  more  days,  the  limit  of  Langham's  stay,  nothing 
very  dreadful  could  happen,  argued  the  reserved  Catherine. 

But  she  was  uneasy,  and  after  a  bit,  as  that  tSte-a-tete  in  the 
garden  still  went  on,  she  could  not,  for  the  life  of  her,  help 
interfering.  She  strolled  out  to  meet  them  with  some  woollen 
stuff  hanging  over  her  arm,  and  made  a  plaintive  and  smiling 
appeal  to  Rose  to  come  and  help  her  with  some  preparations 
for  a  mothers'  meeting  to  be  held  that  afternoon.  Rose,  who 
was  supposed  by  the  family  to  be  '  taking  care '  of  her  sister  at 
a  critical  time,  had  a  moment's  prick  of  conscience,  and  went 
off  with  a  good  grace.  Langham  felt  vaguely  that  he  owed 
Mrs.  Elsmere  another  grudge,  but  he  resigned  himself  and  took 
out  a  cigarette,  wherewith  to  console  himself  for  the  loss  of  his 
companion. 

Presently,  as  he  stood  for  a  moment  turning  over  some  new 
books  on  the  drawing-room  table,  Rose  came  in.  She  held  an 
armful  of  blue  serge;  and,  going  up  to  a  table  in  the  window, 
she  took  from  it  a  little  work-case,  and  was  about  to  vanish 
again  when  Langham  went  up  to  her. 

'  You  look  intolerably  busy,'  he  said  to  her,  discontentedly. 

'  Six  dresses,  ten  cloaks,  eight  petticoats  to  cut  out  by  luncheon 
time,'  she  answered  demurely,  with  a  countenance  of  most  Dorcas- 
like  seriousness,  '  and  if  I  spoil  them  I  shall  have  to  pay  for  the 
stuff!' 

He  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  looked  at  her,  smiling,  still 
master  of  himself  and  of  his  words. 

'  And  no  music — none  at  all  ?  Perhaps  you  don't  know  that 
I  too  can  accompany  1 ' 

'  You  play  ! '  she  exclaimed,  incredulous. 

'Try  me/ 

The  light  of  his  fine  black  eyes  seemed  to  encompass  her. 
She  moved  backward  a  little,  shaking  her  head.  'Not  this 
morning,'  she  said.  '  Oh  dear,  no,  not  this  morning !  I  am 
afraid  you  don't  know  anything  about  tacking  or  fixing,  or  the 
abominable  time  they  take.  Well,  it  could  hardly  be  expected. 
There  is  nothing  in  the  world ' — and  she  shook  her  serge  vindic- 
tively— '  that  I  hate  so  much  ! ' 


CHAP,  xiv  SURREY  191 

'  And  not  this  afternoon,  for  Robert  and  I  go  fishing.  But 
this  evening  ? '  he  said,  detaining  her. 

She  nodded  lightly,  dropped  her  lovely  eyes  with  a  sudden 
embarrassment,  and  went  away  with  lightning  quickness. 

A  minute  or  two  later  Elsmere  laid  a  hand  on  his  friend's 
shoulder.  '  Come  and  see  the  Hall,  old  fellow.  It  will  be  our 
last  chance,  for  the  squire  and  his  sister  come  back  this  after- 
noon. I  must  parochialise  a  bit  afterwards,  but  you  shan't  be 
much  victimised.' 

Langham  submitted,  and  they  sallied  forth.  It  was  a  soft 
rainy  morning,  one  of  the  first  heralds  of  autumn.  Gray  mists 
were  drifting  silently  across  the  woods  and  the  wide  stubbles  of 
the  now  shaven  cornfield,  where  white  lines  of  reapers  were  at 
work,  as  the  morning  cleared,  making  and  stacking  the  sheaves. 
After  a  stormy  night  the  garden  was  strewn  with  debris,  and 
here  and  there  noiseless  prophetic  showers  of  leaves  were  drop- 
ping on  the  lawn. 

Elsruere  took  his  guest  along  a  bit  of  common,  where  great 
black  junipers  stood  up  like  magnates  in  council  above  the 
motley  undergrowth  of  fern  and  heather,  and  then  they  turned 
into  the  park.  A  great  stretch  of  dimpled  land  it  was,  falling 
softly  towards  the  south  and  west,  bounded  by  a  shining  twisted 
river,  and  commanding  from  all  its  highest  points  a  heathery 
world  of  distance,  now  turned  a  stormy  purple  under  the  droop- 
ing fringes  of  the  rain  clouds.  They  walked  downwards  from 
the  moment  of  entering  it,  till  at  last,  when  they  reached  a 
wooded  plateau  about  a  hundred  feet  above  the  river,  the  house 
itself  came  suddenly  into  view. 

That  was  a  house  of  houses  !  The  large  main  building,  as 
distinguished  from  the  lower  stone  portions  to  the  north  which 
represented  a  fragment  of  the  older  Elizabethan  house,  had 
been  in  its  day  the  crown  and  boast  of  Jacobean  house-archi- 
tecture. It  was  fretted  and  jewelled  with  Renaissance  terra- 
cotta work  from  end  to  end  ;  each  gable  had  its  lace  work,  each 
window  its  carved  setting.  And  yet  the  lines  of  the  whole  were 
so  noble,  genius  had  hit  the  general  proportions  so  finely,  that 
no  effect  of  stateliness  or  grandeur  had  been  missed  through  all 
the  accumulation  of  ornament.  Majestic  relic  of  a  vanished 
England,  the  house  rose  amid  the  August  woods  rich  in  every 
beauty  that  site,  and  wealth,  and  centuries  could  give  to  it.  The 
river  ran  about  it  as  though  it  loved  it.  The  cedars  which  had 
kept  it  company  for  well-nigh  two  centuries  gathered  proudly 
round  it ;  the  deer  grouped  themselves  in  the  park  beneath  it, 
as  though  they  were  conscious  elements  in  a  great  whole  of 
loveliness. 

The  two  friends  were  admitted  by  a  housemaid  who  happened 
to  be  busy  in  the  hall,  and  whose  red  cheeks  and  general  breath- 
lessness  bore  witness  to  the  energy  of  the  storm  of  preparation 
now  sweeping  through  the  house. 

The  famous  hall  to  which  Elsmere  at  once  drew  Langham's 


192  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  11 

attention  was,  however,  in  no  way  remarkable  for  size  or  height. 
It  told  comparatively  little  of  seignorial  dignity,  but  it  was  as 
though  generation  after  generation  had  employed  upon  its  per- 
fecting the  craft  of  its  most  delicate  fingers,  the  love  of  its  most 
fanciful  and  ingenious  spirits.  Overhead,  the  stucco-work  ceil- 
ing, covered  with  stags  and  birds  and  strange  heraldic  creatures 
unknown  to  science,  had  the  deep  creamy  tint,  the  consistency 
and  surface  of  antique  ivory.  From  the  white  and  gilt  frieze 
beneath,  untouched,  so  Robert  explained,  since  the  Jacobean 
days  when  it  was  first  executed,  hung  Renaissance  tapestries 
which  would  have  made  the  heart's  delight  of  any  romantic 
child,  so  rich  they  were  in  groves  of  marvellous  trees  hung  with 
red  and  golden  fruits,  in  far-reaching  palaces  and  rock-built 
citadels,  in  flying  shepherdesses  and  pursuing  shepherds.  Be- 
tween the  tapestries,  again,  there  were  breadths  of  carved 
panelling,  crowded  with  all  things  round  and  sweet,  with 
fruits  and  flowers  and  strange  musical  instruments,  with  flying 
cherubs,  and  fair  faces  in  laurel- wreathed  medallions  ;  while  in 
the  middle  of  the  wall  a  great  oriel  window  broke  the  dim 
venerable  surfaces  of  wood  and  tapestry  with  stretches  of 
jewelled  light.  Tables  crowded  with  antiques,  with  Tanagra 
figures  or  Greek  vases,  with  Florentine  bronzes  or  specimens 
of  the  wilful  vivacious  wood -carving  of  seventeenth -century 
Spain,  stood  scattered  on  the  Persian  carpets.  And,  to  complete 
the  whole,  the  gardeners  had  just  been  at  work  on  the  corners 
of  the  hall,  and  of  the  great  window,  so  that  the  hard-won 
subtleties  of  man's  bygone  handiwork,  with  which  the  splendid 
room  was  encrusted  from  top  to  bottom,  were  masked  and  re- 
lieved here  and  there  by  the  careless  easy  splendour  of  flowers, 
which  had  but  to  bloom  in  order  to  eclipse  them  all. 

Robert  was  at  home  in  the  great  pile,  where  for  many  months 
he  had  gone  freely  in  and  out  on  his  way  to  the  library,  and  the 
housekeeper  only  met  him  to  make  an  apology  for  her  working 
dress,  and  to  hand  over  to  him  the  keys  of  the  library  bookcases, 
with  the  fretful  comment  that  seemed  to  have  in  it  the  ghostly 
voice  of  generations  of  housemaids,  'Oh  lor',  sir,  they  are  a 
trouble,  them  books  ! ' 

From  the  drawing-rooms,  full  of  a  more  modern  and  less 
poetical  magnificence,  where  Langham  turned  restless  and  re- 
fractory, Elsmere  with  a  smile  took  his  guest  silently  back  into 
the  hall,  and  opened  a  carved  door  behind  a  curtain.  Passing 
through,  they  found  themselves  in  a  long  passage  lighted  by 
small  windows  on  the  left-hand  side. 

'  This  passage,  please  notice,'  said  Robert,  '  leads  to  nothing 
but  the  wing  containing  the  library,  or  rather  libraries,  which 
is  the  oldest  part  of  the  house.  I  always  enter  it  with  a  kind 
of  pleasing  awe  !  Consider  these  carpets,  which  keep  out  every 
sound,  and  look  how  everything  gets  older  as  we  go  on.' 

For  half-way  down  the  passage  the  ceiling  seemed  to  descend 
upon  their  heads,  the  flooring  became  uneven,  and  woodwork 


CHAP,  xiv  SUKREY  193 

and  walls  showed  that  they  had  passed  from  the  Jacobean  house 
into  the  much  older  Tudor  building.  Presently  Robert  led  the 
way  up  a  few  shallow  steps,  pushed  open  a  heavy  door,  also 
covered  by  curtains,  and  bade  his  companion  enter. 

They  found  themselves  in  a  low  immense  room,  running  at 
right  angles  to  the  passage  they  had  just  quitted.  The  long 
cliamond-paned  window,  filling  almost  half  of  the  opposite  wall, 
faced  the  door  by  which  they  had  come  in ;  the  heavy  carved 
mantelpiece  was  to  their  right ;  an  open  doorway  on  their  left, 
closed  at  present  by  tapestry  hangings,  seemed  to  lead  into  yet 
other  rooms. 

The  walls  of  this  one  were  completely  covered  from  floor  to 
ceiling  with  latticed  bookcases,  enclosed  throughout  in  a  frame 
of  oak  carved  in  light  classical  relief  by  what  appeared  to  be  a 
French  hand  of  the  sixteenth  century.  The  chequered  bindings 
of  the  books,  in  which  the  creamy  tints  of  vellum  predominated, 
lined  the  whole  surface  of  the  wall  with  a  delicate  sobriety  of 
colour ;  over  the  mantelpiece,  the  picture  of  the  founder  of  the 
house — a  Holbein  portrait,  glorious  in  red  robes  and  fur  and 

golden  necklace — seemed  to  gather  up  and  give  voice  to  all  the 
ignity  and  impressiveness  of  the  room  beneath  him  ;  while  on 
the  window  side  the  book-lined  wall  was,  as  it  were,  replaced 
by  the  wooded  face  of  a  hill,  clothed  in  dark  lines  of  trimmed 
yews,  which  rose  abruptly  about  a  hundred  yards  from  the 
house  and  overshadowed  the  whole  library  wing.  Between  the 
window  and  the  hill,  however,  was  a  small  old  English  garden, 
closely  hedged  round  with  yew  hedges,  and  blazing  now  with 
every  flower  that  an  English  August  knows — with  sun-flowers, 
tiger-lilies,  and  dahlias  white  and  red.  The  window  was  low, 
so  that  the  flowers  seemed  to  be  actually  in  the  room,  challeng- 
ing the  pale  tints  of  the  books,  the  tawny  browns  and  blues  of 
the  Persian  carpet,  and  the  scarlet  splendours  of  the  courtier 
over  the  mantelpiece.  The  room  was  lit  up  besides  by  a  few 
gleaming  casts  from  the  antique,  by  the  'Diane  Chasseresse' 
of  the  Louvre,  by  the  Hermes  of  Praxiteles  smiling  with  im- 
mortal kindness  on  the  child  enthroned  upon  his  arm,  and  by  a 
Donatello  figure  of  a  woman  in  marble,  its  subtle  sweet  auster- 
ity contrasting  with  the  Greek  frankness  and  blitheness  of  its 
companions. 

Langham  was  penetrated  at  once  by  the  spell  of  this  strange 
and  beautiful  place.  The  fastidious  instincts  which  had  been 
half  revolted  by  the  costly  accumulations,  the  overblown 
splendours  of  the  drawing-room,  were  abundantly  satisfied  here. 

'  So  it  was  here,'  he  said,  looking  round  him,  '  that  that  man 
wrote  The  Idols  of  the  Market-place  ? ' 

'  I  imagine  so,'  said  Robert ;  '  if  so,  he  might  well  have  felt  a 
little  more  charity  towards  the  human  race  in  writing  it.  The 
race  cannot  be  said  to  have  treated  him  badly  on  the  whole. 
But  now  look,  Langham,  look  at  these  books — the  most  precious 
things  are  here.' 

o 


194  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

And  he  turned  the  key  of  a  particular  section  of  the  wall, 
which  was  not  only  latticed  but  glazed. 

'  Here  is  A  Mirror  for  Magistrates.  Look  at  the  title-page  ; 
you  will  find  Gabriel  Harvey's  name  on  it.  Here  is  a  first 
edition  of  Astrophel  and  Stella,  another  of  the  Arcadia.  They 
may  very  well  be  presentation  copies,  for  the  Wendover  of  that 
day  is  known  to  have  been  a  wit  and  a  writer.  Imagine  find- 
ing them  in  situ  like  this  in  the  same  room,  perhaps  on  the 
same  shelves,  as  at  the  beginning !  The  other  rooms  on  this 
floor  have  been  annexed  since,  but  this  room  was  always  a 
library.' 

Langham  took  the  volumes  reverently  from  Robert's  hands 
into  his  own,  the  scholar's  passion  hot  within  him.  That  glazed 
case  was  indeed  a  storehouse  of  treasures.  Ben  Jonson's  Under- 
woods with  his  own  corrections  :  a  presentation  copy  of  Andrew 
Marvell's  Poems,  with  autograph  notes ;  manuscript  volumes  of 
letters,  containing  almost  every  famous  name  known  to  English 
literature  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  the 
literary  cream,  in  fact,  of  all  the  vast  collection  which  filled 
the  muniment  room  upstairs ;  books  which  had  belonged  to 
Addison,  to  Sir  William  Temple,  to  Swift,  to  Horace  Walpole  ; 
the  first  four  folios  of  Shakespeare,  all  perfect,  and  most  of  the 
quartos — everything  that  the  heart  of  the  English  collector 
could  most  desire  was  there.  And  the  charm  of  it  was  that  only 
a  small  proportion  of  these  precious  things  represented  con- 
scious and  deliberate  acquisition.  The  great  majority  of  them 
had,  as  it  were,  drifted  thither  one  by  one,  carried  there  by  the 
tide  of  English  letters  as  to  a  warm  and  natural  resting-place. 

But  Robert  grew  impatient,  and  hurried  on  his  guest  to  other 
things — to  the  shelves  of  French  rarities,  ranging  from  Du 
Bellay's  Visions,  with  his  autograph,  down  to  the  copy  of  Les 
Mtmoires  d'Outre-Tombe  presented  by  Chateaubriand  to  Madame 
Re"camier,  or  to  a  dainty  manuscript  volume  in  the  fine  writing 
of  Lamartine. 

'  These,'  Robert  explained,  '  were  collected,  I  believe,  by  the 
squire's  father.  He  was  not  in  the  least  literary,  so  they  say, 
but  it  had  always  been  a  point  of  honour  to  carry  on  the  library, 
and  as  he  had  learnt  French  well  in  his  youth  he  bought  French 
things,  taking  advice,  but  without  knowing  much  about  them, 
I  imagine.  It  was  in  the  room  overhead,'  said  Robert,  laying 
down  the  book  he  held,  and  speaking  in  a  lower  key,  '  so  the 
old  doctor  of  the  house  told  me  a  few  weeks  ago,  that  the  same 
poor  soul  put  an  end  to  himself  twenty  years  ago.' 

'  What  in  the  name  of  fortune  did  he  do  that  for  ? ' 

'  Mania,'  said  Robert  quietly. 

'  Whew  ! '  said  the  other,  lifting  his  eyebrows.  '  Is  that  the 
skeleton  in  this  very  magnificent  cupboard  ? ' 

'  It  has  been  the  Wendover  scourge  from  the  beginning,  so 
I  hear.  Every  one  about  here  of  course  explains  this  man's 
eccentricities  by  the  family  history.  But  I  don't  know,'  said 


CHAP,  xiv  SURREY  195 

.Robert,  his  lip  hardening,  'it  may  be  extremely  convenient 
sometimes  to  have  a  tradition  of  the  kind.  A  man  who  knew 
how  to  work  it  might  very  well  enjoy  all  the  advantages  of 
sanity  and  the  privileges  of  insanity  at  the  same  time.  The 
poor  old  doctor  I  was  telling  you  of — old  Meyrick — who  has 
known  the  squire  since  his  boyhood,  and  has  a  dog-like  attach- 
ment to  him,  is  always  hinting  at  mysterious  excuses.  When- 
ever I  let  out  to  him,  as  I  do  sometimes,  as  to  the  state  of  the 
property,  he  talks  of  "inherited  melancholy,"  "rash  judgments," 
and  so  forth.  I  like  the  good  old  soul,  but  I  don't  believe  much 
of  it.  A  man  who  is  sane  enough  to  make  a  great  name  for 
himself  in  letters  is  sane  enough  to  provide  his  estate  with  a 
decent  agent.' 

'  It  doesn't  follow '  said  Langham,  who  was,  however,  so  deep 
in  a  collection  of  Spanish  romances  and  chronicles  that  the 
squire's  mental  history  did  not  seem  to  make  much  impression 
upon  him.  '  Most  men  of  letters  are  mad,  and  I  should  be  in- 
clined,' he  added,  with  a  sudden  and  fretful  emphasis,  '  to  argue 
much  worse  things  for  the  sanity  of  your  squire,  Elsmere,  from 
the  fact  that  this  room  is  undoubtedly  allowed  to  get  damp 
sometimes,  than  from  any  of  those  absurd  parochial  tests  of 
yours.' 

And  he  held  up  a  couple  of  priceless  books,  of  which  the 
Spanish  sheepskin  bindings  showed  traces  here  and  there  of 
moisture. 

'  It  is  no  use,  I  know,  expecting  you  to  preserve  a  moral  sense 
when  you  get  among  books,'  said  Robert  with  a  shrug.  '  I  will 
reserve  my  remarks  on  that  subject.  But  you  must  really  tear 
yourself  away  from  this  room,  Langham,  if  you  want  to  see  the 
rest  of  the  squire's  quarters.  Here  you  have  what  we  may  call 
the  ornamental  sensational  part  of  the  library,  that  part  of  it 
which  would  make  a  stir  at  Sotheby's ;  the  working  parts  are 
all  to  come.' 

Langham  reluctantly  allowed  himself  to  be  dragged  away. 
Robert  held  back  the  hangings  over  the  doorway  leading  into 
the  rest  of  the  wing,  and,  passing  through,  they  found  them- 
selves in  a  continuation  of  the  library  totally  different  in  char- 
acter from  the  magnificent  room  they  had  just  left.  The  walls 
were  no  longer  latticed  and  carved  ;  they  were  closely  packed, 
in  the  most  business-like  way,  with  books  which  represented 
the  squire's  own  collection,  and  were  in  fact  a  chart  or  his  own 
intellectual  history. 

'  This  is  how  I  interpret  this  room,'  said  Robert,  looking  round 
it.  '  Here  are  the  books  he  collected  at  Oxford  in  the  Tractarian 
Movement  and  afterwards.  Look  here,'  and  he  pulled  out  a 
volume  of  St.  Basil. 

Langham  looked,  and  saw  on  the  title-page  a  note  in  faded 
characters  :  '  Given  to  me  by  Newman  at  Oxford,  in  1845.' 

'  Ah,  of  course,  he  was  one  of  them  in  '45  ;  he  must  have  left 
them  very  soon  after,'  said  Langham  reflectively. 


196  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

Robert  nodded.  '  But  look  at  them  !  There  are  the  Tracts, 
all  the  Fathers,  all  the  Councils,  and  masses,  as  you  see,  of  Ang- 
lican theology.  Now  look  at  the  next  case,  nothing  but 
eighteenth  century ! ' 

'  I  see, — from  the  Fathers  to  the  Philosophers,  from  Hooker 
to  Hume.  How  history  repeats  itself  in  the  individual ! ' 

'  And  there  again,'  said  Robert,  pointing  to  the  other  side  of 
the  room,  '  are  the  results  of  his  life  as  a  German  student.' 

'  Germany — ah,  I  remember !    How  long  was  he  there  ? ' 

'Ten  years,  at  Berlin  and  Heidelberg.  According  to  old 
Meyrick,  he  buried  his  last  chance  of  living  like  other  men  at 
Berlin.  His  years  of  extravagant  labour  there  have  left  marks 
upon  him  physically  that  can  never  be  effaced.  But  that  book- 
case fascinates  me.  Half  the  great  names  of  modern  thought 
are  in  those  books.' 

And  so  they  were.  The  first  Langham  opened  had  a  Latin 
dedication  in  a  quavering  old  man's  hand,  '  Amico  et  discipulo 
meo,'  signed  'Fredericus  Gulielmus  Schelling.'  The  next  bore 
the  autograph  of  Alexander  von  Humboldt,  the  next  that  of 
Boeckh,  the  famous  classic,  and  so  on.  Close  by  was  Niebuhr's 
History,  in  the  title-page  of  which  a  few  lines  in  the  historian's 
handwriting  bore  witness  to  much  '  pleasant  discourse  between 
the  writer  and  Roger  Wendover,  at  Bonn,  in  the  summer  of 
1847.'  Judging  from  other  shelves  farther  down,  he  must  also 
have  spent  some  time,  perhaps  an  academic  year,  at  Tubingen, 
for  here  were  most  of  the  early  editions  of  the  Leben  Jesu,  with 
some  corrections  from  Strauss's  hand,  and  similar  records  of 
Baur,  Ewald,  and  other  members  or  opponents  of  the  Tubingen 
school.  And  so  on,  through  the  whole  bookcase.  Something  of 
everything  was  there — Philosophy,  Theology,  History,  Philology. 
The  collection  was  a  medley,  and  made  almost  a  spot  of  disorder 
in  the  exquisite  neatness  and  system  of  the  vast  gathering  of 
which  it  formed  part.  Its  bond  of  union  was  simply  that  it 
represented  the  forces  of  an  epoch,  the  thoughts,  the  men,  the 
occupations  which  had  absorbed  the  energies  of  ten  golden  years. 
Every  book  seemed  to  be  full  of  paper  marks ;  almost  every 
title-page  was  covered  with  minute  writing,  which,  when  exam- 
ined, proved  to  contain  a  record  of  lectures,  or  conversations 
with  the  author  of  the  volume,  sometimes  a  string  of  anecdotes 
or  a  short  biography,  rapidly  sketched  out  of  the  fulness  of  per- 
sonal knowledge,  and  often  seasoned  with  a  subtle  causticity 
and  wit.  A  history  of  modern  thinking  Germany,  of  that  '  un- 
extinguished  hearth'  whence  the  mind  of  Europe  has  been 
kindled  for  three  generations,  might  almost  have  been  evolved 
from  that  bookcase  and  its  contents  alone. 

Langham,  as  he  stood  peering  among  the  ugly,  vilely-printed 
German  volumes,  felt  suddenly  a  kind  of  magnetic  influence 
creeping  over  him.  The  room  seemed  instinct  with  a  harsh 
commanding  presence.  The  history  of  a  mind  and  soul  was 
written  upon  the  face  of  it ;  every  shelf,  as  it  were,  was  an  auto- 


CHAP,  xiv  SURREY  197 

biographical  fragment,  an  '  Apologia  pro  Vita  Mea.'  He  drew 
away  from  the  books  at  last  with  the  uneasy  feeling  of  one  who 
surprises  a  confidence,  and  looked  for  Robert.  Robert  was  at 
the  end  of  the  room,  a  couple  of  volumes  under  his  arm,  anothei*, 
which  he  was  reading,  in  his  hand. 

'  This  is  my  corner,'  he  said,  smiling  and  flushing  a  little,  as 
his  friend  moved  up  to  him.  '  Perhaps  you  don't  know  that  I 
too  am  engaged  upon  a  great  work.' 

'  A  great  work — you  ? 

Langham  looked  at  his  companion  as  though  to  find  out 
whether  his  remark  was  meant  seriously  or  whether  he  might 
venture  to  be  cynical.  Elsmere  writing  !  Why  should  every- 
body write  books  1  It  was  absurd !  The  scholar  who  knows 
what  toll  scholarship  takes  of  life  is  always  apt  to  resent  the 
intrusion  of  the  man  of  action  into  his  domains.  It  looks  to  him 
like  a  kind  of  ridiculous  assumption  that  any  one  d'un  cceur  leger 
can  do  what  has  cost  him  his  heart's  blood. 

Robert  understood  something  of  the  meaning  of  his  tone,  and 
replied  almost  apologetically  ;  he  was  always  singularly  modest 
about  himself  on  the  intellectual  side. 

'Well,  Grey  is  responsible.  He  gave  me  such  a  homily 
before  I  left  Oxford  on  the  absolute  necessity  of  keeping  up 
with  books,  that  I  could  do  nothing  less  than  set  up  a  "  subject 
at  once.  Half  the  day,"  he  used  to  say  to  me,  "you  will  be 
king  of  your  world ;  the  other  half  be  the  slave  of  something 
which  will  take  you  out  of  your  world  into  the  general  world ; 
and  then  he  would  quote  to  me  that  saying  he  was  always  bring- 
ing into  lectures — I  forget  whose  it  is — "  The  decisive  events  of 
the  world  take  place  in  the  intellect.  It  is  the  mission  of  books 
that  they  help  one  to  remember  it."  Altogether  it  was  striking, 
coming  from  one  who  has  always  had  such  a  tremendous  respect 
for  practical  life  and  work,  and  I  was  much  impressed  by  it! 
So  blame  him  ! ' 

Langham  was  silent.  Elsmere  had  noticed  that  any  allusion 
to  Grey  found  Langham  less  and  less  responsive. 

'Well,  what  is  the  "great  work"?'  he  said  at  last,  abruptly. 

'Historical.  Oh,  I  should  have  written  something  without 
Grey ;  I  have  always  had  a  turn  for  it  since  I  was  a  child.  But 
he  was  clear  that  history  was  especially  valuable — especially 
necessary  to  a  clergyman.  I  felt  he  was  right,  entirely  right. 
So  I  took  my  Final  Schools'  history  for  a  basis,  and  started  on 
the  Empire,  especially  the  decay  of  the  Empire.  Some  day  I 
mean  to  take  up  one  of  the  episodes  in  the  great  birth  of  Europe 
— the  makings  of  France,  I  think,  most  likely.  It  seems  to 
lead  farthest  and  tell  most.  I  have  been  at  work  now  nine 
months.' 

'  And  are  just  getting  into  it  ? ' 

'Just  about.  I  have  got  down  below  the  surface,  and  am 
beginning  to  feel  the  joys  of  digging ; '  and  Robert  threw  back 
his  head  with  one  of  his  most  brilliant  enthusiastic  smiles.  '  I 


198  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

have  been  shy  about  boring  you  with  the  thing,  but  the  fact  is, 
I  am  very  keen  indeed ;  and  this  library  has  been  a  godsend  ! ' 

'So  I  should  think.'  Langham  sat  down  on  one  of  the 
carVed  wooden  stools  placed  at  intervals  along  the  bookcases 
and  looked  at  his  friend,  his  psychological  curiosity  rising  a 
little. 

'Tell  me,'  he  said  presently — 'tell  me  what  interests  you 
specially — what  seizes  you — in  a  subject  like  the  making  of 
France,  for  instance  ? ' 

'  Do  you  really  want  to  know  ? '  said  Robert,  incredulously. 

The  other  nodded.  Robert  left  his  place,  and  began  to  walk 
up  and  down,  trying  to  answer  Langham's  question,  and  at  the 
same  time  to  fix  in  speech  a  number  of  sentiments  and  impres- 
sions bred  in  him  by  the  work  of  the  past  few  months.  After  a 
while  Langham  began  to  see  his  way.  Evidently  the  forces  at 
the  bottom  of  this  new  historical  interest  were  precisely  the 
same  forces  at  work  in  Elsmere's  parish  plans,  in  his  sermons,  in 
his  dealings  with  the  poor  and  the  young — forces  of  imagination 
and  sympathy.  What  was  enchaining  him  to  this  new  study 
was  not,  to  begin  with,  that  patient  love  of  ingenious  accumu- 
lation which  is  the  learned  temper  proper,  the  temper,  in  short, 
of  science.  It  was  simply  a  passionate  sense  of  the  human 
problems  which  underlie  all  the  dry  and  dusty  detail  of  history 
and  give  it  tone  and  colour,  a  passionate  desire  to  rescue  some- 
thing more  of  human  life  from  the  drowning,  submerging  past, 
to  realise  for  himself  and  others  the  solidarity  and  continuity  of 
mankind's  long  struggle  from  the  beginning  until  now. 

Langham  had  had  much  experience  of  Elsmere's  versatility 
and  pliancy,  but  he  had  never  realised  it  so  much  as  now,  while 
he  sat  listening  to  the  vivid,  many -coloured  speech  getting 
quicker  and  quicker,  and  more  and  more  telling  and  original  as 
Robert  got  more  absorbed  and  excited  by  what  he  had  to  say. 
He  was  endeavouring  to  describe  to  Langham  the  sort  of  book 
he  thought  might  be  written  on  the  rise  of  modern  society  in 
Gaul,  dwelling  first  of  all  on  the  outward  spectacle  of  the  blood- 
stained Frankish  world  as  it  was,  say,  in  the  days  of  Gregory 
the  Great,  on  its  savage  kings,  its  fiendish  women,  its  bishops 
and  its  saints  ;  and  then,  on  the  conflict  of  ideas  going  on  behind 
all  the  fierce  incoherence  of  the  Empire's  decay,  the  struggle  of 
Roman  order  and  of  German  freedom,  of  Roman  luxury  and  of 
German  hardness  ;  above  all,  the  war  of  orthodoxy  ana  heresy, 
with  its  strange  political  complications.  And  then,  discontented 
still,  as  though  the  heart  of  the  matter  were  still  untouched,  he 
went  on,  restlessly  wandering  the  while,  with  his  long  arms 
linked  behind  him,  'throwing  out'  words  at  an  object  in  his 
mind,  trying  to  grasp  and  analyse  that  strange  sense  which 
haunts  the  student  of  Rome's  decline  as  it  once  overshadowed  the 
infancy  of  Europe,  that  sense  of  a  slowly  departing  majesty,  of 
a  great  presence  just  withdrawn,  and  still  incalculably  potent, 
traceable  throughout  in  that  humbling  consciousness  of  Goth  or 


CHAP,  xiv  SURREY  199 

Frank  that  they  were  but  'beggars  hutting  in  a  palace — the 
place  had  harboured  greater  men  than  they ! 

'There  is  one  thing,'  Langham  said  presently,  in  his  slow 
nonchalant  voice,  when  the  tide  of  Robert's  ardour  ebbed  for  a 
moment,  'that  doesn't  seem  to  have  touched  you  yet.  But  you 
will  come  to  it.  To  my  mind,  it  makes  almost  the  chief  in- 
terest of  history.  It  is  just  this.  History  depends  on  testimony. 
What  is  the  nature  and  the  value  of  testimony  at  given  times  ? 
In  other  words,  did  the  man  of  the  third  century  understand,  or 
report,  or  interpret  facts  in  the  same  way  as  the  man  of  the 
sixteenth  or  the  nineteenth  1  And  if  not,  what  are  the  differ- 
ences, and  what  are  the  deductions  to  be  made  from  them,  if 
any  ?  He  fixed  his  keen  look  on  Robert,  who  was  now  loung- 
ing against  the  books,  as  though  his  harangue  had  taken  it  out 
of  him  a  little. 

'Ah,  well,'  said  the  rector,  smiling,  'I  am  only  just  coming  to 
that.  As  I  told  you,  I  am  only  now  beginning  to  dig  for  my- 
self. Till  now  it  has  all  been  work  at  second  hand.  I  have 
been  getting  a  general  survey  of  the  ground  as  quickly  as  I 
could  with  the  help  of  other  men's  labours.  Now  I  must  go  to 
work  inch  by  inch,  and  find  out  what  the  ground  is  made  of.  I 
won't  forget  your  point.  It  is  enormously  important,  I  grant — 
enormously,'  he  repeated  reflectively. 

'  I  should  rthink  it  is,'  said  Langham  to  himself  as  he  rose ; 
'  the  whole  of  orthodox  Christianity  is  in  it,  for  instance  ! ' 

There  was  not  much  more  to  be  seen.  A  little  wooden  stair- 
case led  from  the  second  library  to  the  upper  rooms,  curious  old 
rooms,  which  had  been  annexed  one  by  one  as  the  squire 
wanted  them,  and  in  which  there  was  nothing  at  all — neither 
chair,  nor  table,  nor  carpet — but  books  only.  All  the  doors 
leading  from  room  to  room  had  been  taken  off ;  the  old  worm- 
eaten  boards  had  been  roughly  stained ;  a  few  old  French 
engravings  had  been  hung  here  and  there  where  the  encroach- 
ing books  left  an  opening  ;  but  otherwise  all  was  bare.  There 
was  a  curious  charm  in  the  space  and  air  of  these  empty  rooms, 
with  their  latticed  windows  opening  on  to  the  hill,  and  letting 
in  day  by  day  the  summer  sun-risings  or  the  winter  dawns, 
which  had  shone  upon  them  for  more  than  three  centuries. 

'  This  is  my  last  day  of  privilege,'  said  Robert.  '  Everybody 
is  shut  out  when  once  he  appears,  from  this  wing,  and  this  part 
of  the  grounds.  This  was  his  father's  room,'  and  the  rector  led 
the  way  into  the  last  of  the  series  ;  '  and  through  there,'  point- 
ing to  a  door  on  the  right,  '  lies  the  waV  to  his  own  sleeping 
room,  which  is  of  course  connected  with  the  more  modern  side 
of  the  house.' 

'So  this  is  where  that  old  man  ventured  "what  Cato  did 
and  Addison  approved," '  murmured  Langham,  standing  in  the 
middle  of  the  room  and  looking  round  him.  This  particular 
room  was  now  used  as  a  sort  of  lumber  place,  a  receptacle  for 
the  superfluous  or  ^useless  books  gradually  thrown  off  by  the 


200  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  u 

great  collection  all  around.  There  were  innumerable  volumes 
in  frayed  or  broken  bindings  lying  on  the  ground.  A  niustv 
smell  hung  over  it  all ;  the  gray  light  from  outside,  which 
seemed  to  give  only  an  added  subtlety  and  charm  to  the  other 
portions  of  the  ancient  building  through  which  they  had  been 
moving,  seemed  here  triste  and  dreary.  Or  Langham  fancied  it. 
He  passed  the  threshold  again  with  a  little  sigh,  and  saw 
suddenly  before  him  at  the  end  of  the  suite  of  rooms,  and 
framed  in  the  doorways  facing  him,  an  engraving  of  a  Greuze 
picture — a  girl's  face  turned  over  her  shoulder,  the  hair  waving 
about  her  temples,  the  lips  parted,  the  teeth  gleaming,  mirth 
and  provocation  and  tender  yielding  in  every  line.  Langham 
started,  and  the  blood  rushed  to  his  heart.  It  was  as  though 
Rose  herself  stood  there  and  beckoned  to  him. 


CHAPTER  XV 

'Now,  having  seen  our  sight,'  said  Robert,  as  they  left  the 
great  mass  of  Mure  well  behind  them, '  come  and  see  our  scandal. 
Both  run  by  the  same  proprietor,  if  you  please.  There  is  a 
hamlet  down  there  in  the  hollow ' — and  he  pointed  to  a  gray 
speck  in  the  distance — '  which  deserves  a  Royal  Commission  all 
to  itself,  which  is  a,  disgrace' — and  his  tone  warmed — 'to  any 
country,  any  owner,  any  agent !  It  is  owned  by  Mr.  Wendover, 
and  I  see  the  pleasing  prospect  straight  before  me  of  beginning 
my  acquaintance  with  him  by  a  fight  over  it.  You  will  admit 
that  it  is  a  little  hard  on  a  man  who  wants  to  live  on  good  terms 
with  the  possessor  of  the  Mure  well  library  to  have  to  open 
relations  with  him  by  a  fierce  attack  on  his  drains  and  his 
pigsties.' 

He  turned  to  his  companion  with  a  half-rueful  spark  of 
laughter  in  his  gray  eyes.  Langham  hardly  caught  what  he 
said.  He  was  far  away  in  meditations  of  his  own. 

'An  attack,'  he  repeated  vaguely ;  'why  an  attack  ?' 

Robert  plunged  again  into  the  great  topic  of  which  his  quick 
mind  was  evidently  full.  Langham  tried  to  listen,  but  was 
conscious  that  his  friend's  social  enthusiasms  bored  him  a  great 
deal.  And  side  by  side  with  the  consciousness  there  slid  in  a 
little  stinging  reflection  that  four  years  ago  no  talk  of  Elsmere's 
could  have  bored  himt 

'What's  the  matte'r  with  this  particular  place?'  he  asked 
languidly,  at  last,  raising  his  eyes  towards  the  group  of  houses 
now  beginning  to  emerge  from  the  distance. 

An  angry  red  mounted  in  Robert's  cheek. 

'What  isn't  the  matter  with  it?  The  houses,  which  were 
built  on  a  swamp  originally,  are  falling  into  ruin ;  the  roofs, 
the  drains,  the  accommodation  per  head,  are  all  about  equally 
scandalous.  The  place  is  harried  with  illness ;  since  I  came 


CHAP,  xv  SURREY  201 

there  has  been  both  fever  and  diphtheria  there.  They  are  all 
crippled  with  rheumatism,  but  that  they  think  nothing  of ;  the 
English  labourer  takes  rheumatism  as  quite  in  the  day's  bar- 
gain !  And  as  to  vice — the  vice  that  comes  of  mere  endless 
persecuting  opportunity — I  can  tell  you  one's  ideas  of  personal 
responsibility  get  a  good  deal  shaken  up  by  a  place  like  this  ! 
And  I  can  do  nothing.  I  brought  over  Henslowe  to  lee  the 
place,  and  he  behaved  like  a  brute.  He  scoffed  at  all  my  com- 
plaints, said  that  no  landlord  would  be  such  a  fool  as  to  build 
tresh  cottages  on  such  a  site,  that  the  old  ones  must  just  be 
allowed  to  go  to  ruin ;  that  the  people  might  live  in  them  if 
they  chose,  or  turn  out  of  them  if  they  chose.  Nobody  forced 
them  to  do  either ;  it  was  their  own  look-out.' 

'  That  was  true,'  said  Langham,  '  wasn't  it  ? ' 

Robert  turned  upon  him  fiercely. 

'Ah  !  you  think  it  so  easy  for  those  poor  creatures  to  leave 
their  homes,  their  working  places !  Some  of  them  have  been 
there  thirty  years.  They  are  close  to  the  two  or  three  farms 
that  employ  them,  close  to  the  osier  beds  which  give  them  extra 
earnings  in  the  spring.  If  they  were  turned  out  there  is 
nothing  nearer  than  Murewell,  and  not  a  single  cottage  to  be 
found  there.  I  don't  say  it  is  a  landlord's  duty  to  provide  more 
cottages  than  are  wanted ;  but  if  the  labour  is  wanted,  the 
labourer  should  be  decently  housed.  He  is  worthy  of  his  hire, 
and  woe  to  the  man  who  neglects  or  ill-treats  him  ! ' 

Langham  could  not  help  smiling,  partly  at  the  vehemence  of 
the  speech,  partly  at  the  lack  of  adjustment  between  his  friend's 
mood  and  his  own.  He  braced  himself  to  take  the  matter  more 
seriously,  but  meanwhile  Robert  had  caught  the  smile,  and  his 
angry  eyes  melted  at  once  into  laughter. 

There  I  am,  ranting  as  usual,'  he  said  penitently.  'Took 
you  for  Henslowe,  I  suppose !  Ah,  well,  never  mind.  I  hear 
the  Provost  has  another  book  on  the  stocks.' 

So  they  diverged  into  other  things,  talking  politics  and  new 
books,  public  men  and  what  not,  till,  at  the  end  of  a  long  and 
gradual  descent  through  wooded  ground,  some  two  miles  to  the 
north-west  of  the  park,  they  emerged  from  the  trees  beneath 
which  they  had  been  walking,  and  found  themselves  on  a 
bridge,  a  gray  sluggish  stream  flowing  beneath  them,  and  the 
hamlet  they  sought  rising  among  the  river  flats  on  the  farther 
side. 

'  There,'  said  Robert,  stopping,  '  we  are  at  our  journey's  end. 
Now  then,  what  sort  of  a  place  of  human  habitation  do  you  call 
tliat  1 ' 

The  bridge  whereon  they  stood  crossed  the  main  channel  of 
the  river,  which  just  at  that  point,  however,  parted  into  several 
branches,  and  came  meandering  slowly  down  through  a  little 
bottom  or  valley,  filled  with  osier  beds,  long  since  robbed  of 
their  year's  growth  of  shoots.  On  the  other  side  of  the  river,  on 
ground  all  but  level  with  the  osier  beds  which  interposed  be- 


202  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

tween  them  and  the  stream,  rose  a  miserable  group  of  houses, 
huddled  together  as  though  their  bulging  walls  and  rotten  roofs 
could  only  maintain  themselves  at  all  by  the  help  and  support 
which  each  wretched  hovel  gave  to  its  neighbour.  The  mud 
walls  were  stained  with  yellow  patches  of  lichen,  the  palings 
round  the  little  gardens  were  broken  and  ruinous.  Close  beside 
them  aft  was  a  sort  of  open  drain  or  water-course,  stagnant  and 
noisome,  which  dribbled  into  the  river  a  little  above  the  bridge. 
Behind  them  rose  a  high  gravel  bank  edged  by  firs,  and  a  line 
of  oak  trees  against  the  sky.  The  houses  stood  in  the  shadow 
of  the  bank  looking  north,  and  on  this  gray,  lowering  day,  the 
dreariness,  the  gloom,  the  squalor  of  the  place  were  inde- 
scribable. 

'  Well,  that  is  a  God-forsaken  hole  ! '  said  Langham,  studying 
it,  his  interest  roused  at  last,  rather,  perhaps,  by  the  Ruysdael- 
like  melancholy  and  picturesqueness  of  the  scene  than  by  its 
human  suggestiveness.  '  I  could  hardly  have  imagined  such  a 
place  existed  in  southern  England.  It  is  more  like  a  bit  of 
Ireland.' 

'  If  it  were  Ireland  it  might  be  to  somebody's  interest  to  ferret 
it  out,'  said  Robert  bitterly.  '  But  these  poor  folks  are  out  of 
the  world.  They  may  be  brutalised  with  impunity.  Oh,  such 
a  case  as  I  had  here  last  autumn  !  A  young  girl  of  sixteen  or 
seventeen,  who  would  have  been  healthy  and  happy  anywhere 
else,  stricken  by  the  damp  and  the  poison  of  the  place,  dying  in 
six  weeks,  of  complications  due  to  nothing  in  the  world  but  pre- 
ventable cruelty  and  neglect !  It  was  a  sight  that  burnt  into  my 
mind,  once  for  all,  what  is  meant  by  a  landlord's  responsibility. 
I  tried,  of  course,  to  move  her,  but  neither  she  nor  her  parents 
— elderly  folk — had  energy  enough  for  a  change.  They  only 
prayed  to  be  let  alone.  I  came  over  the  last  evening  of  her  life 
to  give  her  the  communion.  "  Ah,  sir  ! "  said  the  mother  to  me 
— not  bitterly — that  is  the  strange  thing,  they  have  so  little  bitter- 
ness— "  if  Mister  'Enslowe  would  jest  a  mended  that  bit  'o  roof 
of  ours  last  winter,  Bessie  needn't  have  laid  in  the  wet  so  many 
nights  as  she  did,  and  she  coughin'  fit  to  break  your  heart,  for 
all  the  things  yer  could  put  over  'er." ' 

Robert  paused,  his  strong  young  face,  so  vehemently  angry  a 
few  minutes  before,  tremulous  with  feeling.  '  Ah,  well,'  he  said 
at  last  with  a  long  breath,  moving  away  from  the  parapet  of 
the  bridge  on  which  he  had  been  leaning,  '  better  be  oppressed 
than  oppressor,  any  day  !  Now,  then,  I  must  deliver  my  stores. 
There's  a  child  here  Catherine  and  I  have  been  doing  our  best 
to  pull  through  typhoid.' 

They  crossed  the  bridge  and  turned  down  the  track  leading 
to  the  hamlet.  Some  planks  carried  them  across  the  ditch,  the 
main  sewer  of  the  community,  as  Robert  pointed  out,  and  they 
made  their  way  through  the  filth  surrounding  one  of  the  nearest 
cottages. 

A  feeble  elderly  man,  whose  shaking  limbs  and  sallow  blood- 


CHAP,  xv  SURREY  203 

less  skin  make  him  look  much  older  than  he  actually  was,  opened 
the  door  and  invited  them  to  come  in.  Robert  passed  on  into 
an  inner  room,  conducted  thither  by  a  woman  who  had  been 
sitting  working  over  the  fire.  Langham  stood  irresolute  ;  but 
the  old  man's  quavering  '  kindly  take  a  chair,  sir  ;  you've  come 
a  long  way,'  decided  him,  and  he  stepped  in. 

Inside  the  hovel  was  miserable  indeed.  It  belonged  to  that 
old  and  evil  type  which  the  efforts  of  the  last  twenty  years  have 
done  so  much  all  over  England  to  sweep  away  :  four  mud  walls, 
enclosing  an  oblong  space  about  eight  yards  long,  divided  into 
two  unequal  portions  by  a  lath  and  plaster  partition,  with  no 
upper  storey,  a  thatched  roof,  now  entirely  out  of  repair,  and 
letting  in  the  rain  in  several  places,  and  a  paved  floor  little 
better  than  the  earth  itself,  so  large  and  cavernous  were  the  gaps 
between  the  stones.  The  dismal  place  had  no  small  adornings — 
none  of  those  little  superfluities  which,  however  ugly  and  trivial, 
are  still  so  precious  in  the  dwellings  of  the  poor,  as  showing  the 
existence  of  some  instinct  or  passion  which  is  not  the  creation 
of  the  sheerest  physical  need ;  and  Langham,  as  he  sat  down 
caught  the  sickening  marsh  smell  which  the  Oxford  man,  ac- 
customed to  the  odours  of  damp  meadows  in  times  of  ebbing 
flood  and  festering  sun,  knows  so  well.  As  old  Milsom  began  to 
talk  to  him  in  his  weak  tremulous  voice,  the  visitor's  attention 
was  irresistibly  held  by  the  details  about  him.  *  Fresh  as  he  was 
from  all  the  delicate  sights,  the  harmonious  colours  and  de- 
lightful forms  of  the  squire's  house,  they  made  an  unusually 
sharp  impression  on  his  fastidious  senses.  What  does  human 
life  become  lived  on  reeking  floors  and  under  stifling  roofs  like 
these?  What  strange  abnormal  deteriorations,  physical  and 
spiritual,  must  it  not  inevitably  undergo?  Langham  felt  a 
sudden  inward  movement  of  disgust  and  repulsion.  'For 
heaven's  sake,  keep  your  superstitions  ! '  he  could  have  cried  to 
the  whole  human  race,  '  or  any  other  narcotic  that  a  grinding 
fate  has  left  you.  What  does  anything  matter  to  the  mass  of 
mankind  but  a  little  ease,  a  little  lightening  of  pressure  on  this 
side  or  on  that  ? ' 

Meanwhile  the  old  man  went  maundering  on,  talking  of  the 
weather,  and  of  his  sick  child,  and  '  Mr.  Elsmere,'  with  a  kind  of 
listless  incoherence  which  hardly  demanded  an  answer,  though 
Langham  threw  in  a  word  or  two  here  and  there. 

Among  other  things,  he  began  to  ask  a  question  or  two  about 
Robert's  predecessor,  a  certain  Mr.  Preston,  who  had  left  behind 
him  a  memory  of  amiable  evangelical  indolence. 

'  Did  you  see  much  of  him  ? '  he  asked. 

'  Oh  law,  no,  sir  ! '  replied  the  man,  surprised  into  something 
like  energy.  '  Never  seed  'im  more  'n  once  a  year,  and  some- 
times not  that ! ' 

'Was  he  liked  here?' 

'Well,  sir,  it  was  like  this,  you  see.  My  wife,  she's  north- 
country,  she  is,  comes  from  Yorkshire  ;  sometimes  she'd  used  to 


204  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

say  to  me,  "  Passon  'ee  ain't  much  good,  and  passon  'ee  ain't 
much  harm.  'Ee's  no  more  good  nor  more  'arm,  so  fer  as  /  can 
see,  nor  a  chip  in  a  basin  o'  parritch."  And  that  was  just  about 
it,  sir,'  said  the  old  man,  pleased  for  the  hundredth  time  with 
his  wife's  bygone  flight  of  metaphor  and  his  own  exact  memory 
of  it. 

As  to  the  rector's  tendance  of  his  child,  his  tone  was  very  cool 
and  guarded. 

'  It  do  seem  strange,  sir,  as  nor  he  nor  Doctor  Grimes  'ull  let 
her  have  anything  to  put  a  bit  of  flesh  on  her,  nothin'  but  them 
messy  things  as  he  brings — milk  an'  that.  An'  the  beef  jelly — 
lor,  such  a  trouble !  Missis  Elsmere,  he  tells  my  wife,  strains 
all  the  stuff  through  a  cloth,  she  do  ;  never  seed  anythin'  like  it, 
nor  my  wife  neither.  People  is  clever  nowadays,'  said  the 
speaker  dubiously.  Langham  realised  that,  in  this  quarter  of 
his  parish  at  any  rate,  his  friend's  pastoral  vanity,  if  he  had 
any,  would  not  find  much  to  feed  on.  Nothing,  to  judge  from 
this  specimen  at  least,  greatly  affected  an  inhabitant  of  Mile 
End.  Gratitude,  responsiveness,  imply  health  and  energy,  past 
or  present.  The  only  constant  defence  which  the  poor  have 
against  such  physical  conditions  as  those  which  prevailed  at 
Mile  End  is  apathy. 

As  they  came  down  the  dilapidated  steps  at  the  cottage  door, 
Robert  drew  in  "vfith  avidity  a  long  draught  of  the  outer  air. 

'  Ugh  ! '  he  said  with  a  sort  of  groan, '  that  bedroom  !  Nothing 
gives  one  such  a  sense  of  the  toughness  of  human  life  as  to  see 
a  child  recovering,  actually  recovering,  in  such  a  pestilential 
den !  Father,  mother,  grown-up  son,  girl  of  thirteen,  and 

grandchild,  all  huddled  in  a  space  just  fourteen  feet  square, 
angham  ! '  and  he  turned  passionately  on  his  companion,    what 
defence  can  be  found  for  a  man  who  lives  in  a  place  like  Mure- 
well  Hall,  and  can  take  money  from  human  beings  for  the  use 
of  a  sty  like  that  ? ' 

'  Gently,  my  friend.     Probably  the  squire,  being  the  sort  of 
recluse  he  is,  has  never  seen  the  place,  or,  at  any  rate,  not  for 
years,  and  knows  nothing  about  it ! ' 
'  More  shame  for  him  ! ' 

'  True  in  a  sense,'  said  Langham,  a  little  drily  ;  '  but  as  you 
may  want  hereafter  to  make  excuses  for  your  man,  and  he  may 
give  you  occasion,  I  wouldn't  begin  by  painting  him  to  yourself 
any  blacker  than  need  be.' 

Eobert  laughed,  sighed  and  acquiesced.  '  I  am  a  hot-headed, 
impatient  kind  of  creature  at  the  best  of  times,'  he  confessed. 
'  They  tell  me  that  great  things  have  been  done  for  the  poor 
round  here  in  the  last  twenty  years.  Something  has  been  done, 
certainly.  But  why  are  the  old  ways,  the  old  evil  neglect  and 
apathy,  so  long,  so  terribly  long  in  dying  ?  This  social  progress 
of  ours  we  are  so  proud  of  is  a  clumsy  limping  jade  at  best! ' 

They  prowled  a  little  more  about  the  hamlet,  every  step 
almost  revealing  some  new  source  of  poison  and  disease.  Of 


CHAP,  xv  SURREY  205 

their  various  visits,  however,  Langham  remembered  nothing 
afterwards  but  a  little  scene  in  a  miserable  cottage,  where  they 
found  a  whole  family  party  gathered  round  the  mid-day  meal. 
A  band  of  puny,  black,  black-eyed  children  were  standing  or 
sitting  at  the  table.  The  wife,  confined  of  twins  three  weeks 
before,  sat  by  the  fire,  deathly  pale,  a  '  bad  leg '  stretched  out 
before  her  on  some  improvised  support,  one  baby  on  her  lap  and 
another  dark-haired  bundle  asleep  in  a  cradle  beside  her.  There 
was  a  pathetic  pinched  beauty  about  the  whole  family.  Even 
the  tiny  twins  were  comparatively  shapely ;  all  the  other 
children  had  delicate  transparent  skins,  large  eyes,  and  small 
colourless  mouths.  The  father,  a  picturesque  handsome  fellow, 
looking  as  though  he  had  gipsy  blood  in  his  veins,  had  opened 
the  door  to  their  knock.  Robert,  seeing  the  meal,  would  have 
retreated  at  once,  in  spite  of  the  children's  shy  inviting  looks, 
but  a  glance  past  them  at  the  mother's  face  checked  the  word 
of  refusal  and  apology  on  his  lips,  and  he  stepped  in. 

In  after  years  Langham  was  always  apt  to  see  him  in  imagi- 
nation as  he  saw  him  then,  standing  beside  the  bent  figure  of 
the  mother,  his  quick  pitiful  eyes  taking  in  the  pallor  and 
exhaustion  of  face  and  frame,  his  hand  resting  instinctively  on 
the  head  of  a  small  creature  that  had  crept  up  beside  him,  his 
look  all  attention  and  softness  as  the  woman  feebly  told  him 
some  of  the  main  facts  of  her  state.  The  young  rector  at  the 
moment  might  have  stood  for  the  modern  '  Man  of  Feeling,'  as 
sensitive,  as  impressionable,  and  as  free  from  the  burden  of  self, 
as  his  eighteenth-century  prototype. 

On  the  way  home  Robert  suddenly  remarked  to  his  com- 
panion, '  Have  you  heard  my  sister-in-law  play  yet,  Langham  1 
What  did  you  think  of  it  1 ' 

'  Extraordinary  ! '  said  Langham  briefly.  '  The  most  consider- 
able gift  I  ever  came  across  in  an  amateur.' 

His  olive  cheek  flushed  a  little  involuntarily.  Robert  threw 
a  quick  observant  look  at  him. 

The  difiiculty,'  he  exclaimed,  '  is  to  know  what  to  do  with  it ! ' 

'Why  do  you  make  the  difficulty?  I  gather  she  wants  to 
study  abroad.  What  is  there  to  prevent  it  r 

Langham  turned  to  his  companion  with  a  touch  of  asperity. 
He  could  not  stand  it  that  Elsmere  should  be  so  much  narrowed 
and  warped  by  that  wife  of  his,  and  her  prejudices.  Why  should 
that  gifted  creature  be  cribbed,  cabined,  and  confined  in  this 
way? 

I  grant  you,'  said  Robert,  with  a  look  of  perplexity,  '  there 
is  not  much  to  prevent  it.' 

And  he  was  silent  a  moment,  thinking,  on  his  side,  very 
tenderly  of  all  the  antecedents  and  explanations  of  that  old- 
world  distrust  of  art  and  the  artistic  life  so  deeply  rooted  in  his 
wife,  even  though  in  practice  and  under  his  influence  she  had 
made  concession  after  concession. 

'The  great  solution  of  all,'  he  said  presently,  brightening, 


206  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

'  would  be  to  get  her  married.  I  don't  wonder  her  belongings 
dislike  the  notion  of  anything  so  pretty  and  so  flighty  going  off 
to  live  by  itself.  And  to  break  up  the  home  in  Whindale  would 
be  to  undo  everything  their  father  did  for  them,  to  defy  his 
most  solemn  last  wishes.' 

'  To  talk  of  a  father's  wishes,  in  a  case  of  this  kind,  ten  years 
after  his  death,  is  surely  excessive  ? '  said  Langham  with  dry 
interrogation  ;  then,  suddenly  recollecting  himself,  '  I  beg  your 
pardon,  Elsmere.  I  am  interfering.' 

'  Nonsense,'  said  Robert  brightly,  '  I  don't  wonder,  it  seems 
like  a  difficulty  of  our  own  making.  Like  so  many  difficulties, 
it  depends  on  character,  present  character,  bygone  character 
'  And  again  he  fell  musing  on  his  Westmoreland  experi- 
ences, and  on  the  intensity  of  that  Puritan  type  it  had  revealed 
to  him.  'However,  as  I  said,  marriage  would  be  the  natural 
way  out  of  it.' 

An  easy  way,  I  should  think,'  said  Langham,  after  a  pause. 

'  It  won't  be  so  easy  to  find  the  right  man.  She  is  a  young 
person  with  a  future,  is  Miss  Rose.  She  wants  somebody  in  the 
stream ;  somebody  with  a  strong  hand  who  will  keep  her  in 
order  and  yet  give  her  a  wide  range  ;  a  rich  man,  I  think — she 
hasn't  the  ways  of  a  poor  man's  wife  ;  but,  at  any  rate,  some  one 
who  will  be  proud  of  her,  and  yet  have  a  full  life  of  his  own  in 
which  she  may  share.' 

'Your  views  are  extremely  clear,'  said  Langham,  and  his 
smile  had  a  touch  of  bitterness  in  it.  '  If  hers  agree,  I  prophesy 
you  won't  have  long  to  wait.  She  has  beauty,  talent,  charm — 
everything  that  rich  and  important  men  like.' 

There  was  the  slightest  sarcastic  note  in  the  voice.  Robert 
winced.  It  was  borne  in  upon  one  of  the  least  worldly  of  mortals 
that  he  had  been  talking  like  the  veriest  schemer.  What  vague 
quick  impulse  had  driven  him  on  ? 

By  the  time  they  emerged  again  upon  the  Murewell  Green 
the  rain  had  cleared  altogether  away,  and  the  autumnal  morning 
had  broken  into  sunshine,  which  played  mistily  on  the  sleeping 
woods,  on  the  white  fronts  of  the  cottages,  and  the  wide  green 
where  the  rain -pools  glistened.  On  the  hill  leading  to  the 
rectory  there  was  the  flutter  of  a  woman's  dress.  As  they 
hurried  on,  afraid  of  being  late  for  luncheon,  they  saw  that  it 
was  Rose  in  front  of  them. 

Langham  started  as  the  slender  figure  suddenly  defined  itself 
against  the  road.  A  tumult  within,  half  rage,  half  feeling, 
showed  itself  only  in  an  added  rigidity  of  the  finely-cut  features. 

Rose  turned  directly  she  heard  the  steps  and  voices,  and  over 
the  dreaminess  of  her  face  there  flashed  a  sudden  brightness. 

'  You  have  been  a  long  time  ! '  she  exclaimed,  saying  the  first 
thing  that  came  into  her  head,  joyously,  rashly,  like  the  child  she 
in  reality  was.  '  How  many  halt  and  maimed  has  Robert  taken 
you  to  see,  Mr.  Langham  ? 

'We  went  to  Murewell  first.     The  library  was  well  worth 


CHAP,  xv  SURREY  207 

seeing.  Since  then  we  have  been  a  parish  round,  distributing 
stores.' 

Rose's  look  changed  in  an  instant.  The  words  were  spoken 
by  the  Langham  01  her  earliest  acquaintance.  The  man  who 
that  morning  had  asked  her  to  play  to  him  had  gone — vanished 
away. 

'  How  exhilarating  ! '  she  said  scornfully.  '  Don't  you  wonder 
how  any  one  can  ever  tear  themselves  away  from  the  country  ? ' 

'  Rose,  don't  be  abusive,'  said  Robert,  opening  his  eyes  at  her 
tone.  Then,  passing  his  arm  through  hers,  he  looked  banter- 
ingly  down  upon  her.  'For  the  first  time  since  you  left  the 
metropolis  you  have  walked  yourself  into  a  colour.  It's  becom- 
ing— and  it  s  Murewell — so  be  civil ! ' 

'  Oh,  nobody  denies  you  a  high  place  in  milkmaids  ! '  she  said, 
with  her  head  in  air — and  they  went  off  into  a  minute's  sparring. 

Meanwhile  Langham,  on  the  other  side  of  the  road,  walked 
up  slowly,  his  eyes  on  the  ground.  Once,  when  Ro'se's  eye 
caught  him,  a  shock  ran  through  her.  There  was  already  a 
look  of  slovenly  age  about  his  stooping  bookworm's  gait.  Her 
companion  of  the  night  before — handsome,  animated,  human — 
where  was  he?  The  girl's  heart  felt  a  singular  contraction. 
Then  she  turned  and  rent  herself,  and  Robert  found  her  more 
mocking  and  sprightly  than  ever. 

At  the  rectory  gate  Robert  ran  on  to  overtake  a  farmer  on 
the  road.  Rose  stooped  to  open  the  latch  ;  Langham  mechani- 
cally made  a  quick  movement  forward  to  anticipate  her.  Their 
fingers  touched  ;  she  drew  hers  hastily  away  and  passed  in,  an 
erect  and  dignified  figure,  in  her  curving  garden  hat. 

Langham  went  straight  up  to  his  room,  shut  the  door,  and 
stood  before  the  open  window,  deaf  and  blind  to  everything 
save  an  inward  storm  of  sensation. 

'  Fool !  Idiot ! '  he  said  to  himself  at  last,  with  fierce  stifled 
emphasis,  while  a  kind  of  dumb  fury  with  himself  and  circum- 
stance swept  through  him. 

That  he,  the  poor  and  solitary  student  whose  only  sources  of 
self-respect  lay  in  the  deliberate  limitations,  the  reasoned  and 
reasonable  renunciations  he  had  imposed  upon  his  life,  should 
have  needed  the  reminder  of  his  old  pupil  not  to  fall  in  love 
with  his  brilliant  ambitious  sister  !  His  irritable  self -conscious- 
ness enormously  magnified  Elsmere's  motive  and  Elsmere's 
words.  That  golden  vagueness  and  softness  of  temper  which 
had  possessed  him  since  his  last  sight  of  her  gave  place  to  one 
of  bitter  tension. 

With  sardonic  scorn  he  pointed  out  to  himself  that  his  im- 
agination was  still  held  by,  his  nerves  were  still  thrilling  under, 
the  mental  image  of  a  girl  looking  up  to  him  as  no  woman  had 
ever  looked — a  girl,  white-armed,  white-necked — with  softened 
eyes  of  appeal  and  confidence.  He  bade  himself  mark  that 
during  the  whole  of  his  morning  walk  with  Robert  down  to  its 
last  stage,  his  mind  had  been  really  absorbed  in  some  prepos- 


208  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

terous  dream  he  was  now  top  self -contemptuous  to  analyse. 
Pretty  well  for  a  philosopher,  in  four  days  !  What  a  ridiculous 
business  is  life — what  a  contemptible  creature  is  man,  how  in- 
capable of  dignity,  of  consistency  ! 

At  luncheon  he  talked  rather  more  than  usual,  especially  on 
literary  matters  with  Robert.  Rose,  too,  was  fully  occupied  in 
giving  Catherine  a  sarcastic  account  of  a  singing  lesson  she 
had  been  administering  in  the  school  that  morning.  Catherine 
winced  sometimes  at  the  tone  of  it. 

That  afternoon  Robert,  in  high  spirits,  his  rod  over  his 
shoulder,  his  basket  at  his  back,  carried  off  his  guest  for  a 
lounging  afternoon  along  the  river.  Elsmere  enjoyed  these 
fishing  expeditions  like  a  boy.  They  were  his  holidays,  relished 
all  the  more  because  he  kept  a  jealous  account  of  them  with  his 
conscience.  He  sauntered  along,  now  throwing  a  cunning  and 
effectual  fly,  now  resting,  smoking,  and  chattering,  as  the  fancy 
took  him.  He  found  a  great  deal  of  the  old  stimulus  and 
piquancy  in  Langham's  society,  but  there  was  an  occasional 
irritability  in  his  companion,  especially  towards  himself  person- 
ally, which  puzzled  him.  After  a  while,  indeed,  he  began  to 
feel  himself  the  unreasonably  cheerful  person  which  he  evidently 
appeared  to  his  companion.  A  mere  ignorant  enthusiast, 
banished  for  ever  from  the  realm  of  pure  knowledge  by  certain 
original  and  incorrigible  defects — after  a  few  hours'  talk  with 
Langham  Robert's  quick  insight  always  showed  him  some  image 
of  himself  resembling  this  in  his  friend's  mind. 

At  last  he  turned  restive.  He  had  been  describing  to  Lang- 
ham  his  acquaintance  with  the  Dissenting  minister  of  the  place 
— a  strong  coarse-grained  fellow  of  sensuous  excitable  tempera- 
ment, famous  for  his  noisy  'conversion  meetings,'  and  for  a 
gymnastic  dexterity  in  the  quoting  and  combining  of  texts, 
unrivalled  in  Robert's  experience.  Some  remark  on  the  Dis- 
senter's logic,  made,  perhaps,  a  little  too  much  in  the  tone  of  the 
Churchman  conscious  of  University  advantages,  seemed  to 
irritate  Langham. 

'  You  think  your  Anglican  logic  in  dealing  with  the  Bible  so 
superior !  On  the  contrary,  I  am  all  for  your  Ranter.  He  is 
your  logical  Protestant.  Historically,  you  Anglican  parsons  are 
where  you  are  and  what  you  are,  because  ^Englishmen,  as  a 
whole,  like  attempting  the  contradictory — like,  above  all,  to 
eat  their  cake  and  have  it.  The  nation  has  made  you  and 
maintains  you  for  its  own  purposes.  But  that  is  another 
matter.' 

Robert  smoked  on  a  moment  in  silence.  Then  he  flushed  and 
laid  down  his  pipe.  N 

'  We  are  all  fools  in  your  eyes,  I  know  !  A  la  bonne  heure  ! 
I  have  been  to  the  University,  and  talk  what  he  is  pleased  to 
call  "  philosophy  " — therefore  Mr.  Colson  denies  me  faith.  You 
have  always,  in  your  heart  of  hearts,  denied  me  knowledge. 
But  I  cling  to  both  in  spite  of  you.' 


CHAP,  xv  SURREY  209 

There  was  a  ray  of  defiance,  of  emotion,  in  his  look.  Lang- 
ham  met  it  in  silence. 

'  I  deny  you  nothing,'  he  said  at  last,  slowly.  '  On  the  con- 
trary, I  believe  you  to  be  the  possessor  of  all  that  is  best  worth 
having  in  life  and  mind.' 

His  irritation  had  all  died  away.  His  tone  was  one  of  inde- 
scribable depression,  and  his  great  black  eyes  were  fixed  on 
Robert  with  a  melancholy  which  startled  his  companion.  By  a 
subtle  transition  Elsmere  felt  himself  touched  with  a  pang  of 
profound  pity  for  the  man  who  an  instant  before  had  seemed  to 

£)se  as  his  scornful  superior.     He  stretched  out  his  hand,  and 
id  it  on  his  friend's  shoulder. 

Rose  spent  the  afternoon  in  helping  Catherine  with  various 
parochial  occupations.  In  the  course  of  them  Catherine  asked 
many  questions  about  Long  Whindale.  Her  thoughts  clung  to 
the  hills,  to  the  gray  farmhouses,  the  rough  men  and  women 
inside  them.  But  Rose  gave  her  small  satisfaction. 

'  Poor  old  Jim  Backhouse  ! '  said  Catherine,  sighing.  '  Agnes 
tells  me  he  is  quite  bedridden  now.' 

'Well,  and  a  good  thing  for  John,  don't  you  think,'  said 
Rose  briskly,  covering  a  parish  library  book  the  while  in  a  way 
which  made  Catherine's  fingers  itch  to  take  it  from  her,  '  and 
for  us  1  It's  some  use  having  a  carrier  now.' 

Catherine  made  no  reply.  She  thought  of  the  'noodle' 
fading  out  of  life  in  the  room  where  Mary  Backhouse  died  ;  she 
actually  saw  the  white  hair,  the  blurred  eyes,  the  palsied  hands, 
the  poor  emaciated  limbs  stretched  along  the  settle.  Her  heart 
rose,  but  she  said  nothing. 

'And  has  Mrs.  Thornburgh  been  enjoying  her  summer?' 

'  Oh !  I  suppose  so,'  said  Rose,  her  tone  indicating  a  quite 
measureless  indifference.  '  She  had  another  young  Oxford  man 
staying  with  her  in  June — a  missionary — and  it  annoyed  her 
very  much  that  neither  Agnes  nor  I  would  intervene  to  prevent 
his  resuming  his  profession.  She  seemed  to  think  it  was  a 
question  of  saving  him  from  being  eaten,  and  apparently  he 
would  have  proposed  to  either  of  us.' 

Catherine  could  not  help  laughing.  'I  suppose  she  still 
thinks  she  married  Robert  and  me.' 

'  Of  course.     So  she  did.' 

Catherine  coloured  a  little,  but  Rose's  hard  lightness  of  tone 
was  unconquerable. 

'  Or  if  she  didn't,'  Rose  resumed,  '  nobody  could  have  the  heart 
to  rob  her  of  the  illusion.  Oh,  by  the  way,  Sarah  has  been 
under  warning  since  June  !  Mrs.  Thornburgh  told  her  desper- 
ately that  she  must  either  throw  over  her  young  man,  who  was 
picked  up  drunk  at  the  vicarage  gate  one  night,  or  vacate  the 
vicarage  kitchen.  Sarah  cheerfully  accepted  her  month's  notice, 
and  is  still  making  the  vicarage  jams  and  walking  out  with  the 
young  man  every  Sunday.  Mrs.  Thornburgh  sees  that  it  will 

p 


210  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

require  a  convulsion  of  nature  to  get  rid  either  of  Sarah  or  the 
young  man,  and  has  succumbed.' 

'  And  the  Tysons  ?    And  that  poor  Walker  girl  ? ' 

'  Oh,  dear  me,  Catherine ! '  said  Rose,  a  strange  dispropor- 
tionate flash  of  impatience  breaking  through.  '  Every  one  in 
Long  Whindale  is  always  just  where  and  what  they  were  last 
year.  I  admit  they  are  born  and  die,  but  they  do  nothing  else 
of  a  decisive  kind.' 

Catherine's  hands  worked  away  for  a  while,  then  she 
laid  down  her  book  and  said,  lifting  her  clear  large  eyes  on 
her  sister, — 

'  Was  there  never  a  time  when  you  loved  the  valley,  Rose  ? ' 

'  Never  ! '  cried  Rose. 

Then  she  pushed  away  her  work,  and  leaning  her  elbows  on 
the  table  turned  her  brilliant  face  to  Catherine.  There  was 
frank  mutiny  in  it. 

'By  the  way,  Catherine,  are  you  going  to  prevent  mamma 
from  letting  me  go  to  Berlin  for  the  winter  1 ' 

'  And  after  Berlin,  Rose  ? '  said  Catherine,  presently,  her  gaze 
bent  upon  her  work. 

'After  Berlin?  What  next?'  said  Rose  recklessly.  'Well, 
after  Berlin  I  shall  try  to  persuade  mamma  and  Agnes,  I  sup- 
pose, to  come  and  back  me  up  in  London.  We  could  still  be 
some  months  of  the  year  at  Burwood.' 

Now  she  had  said  it  out.  But  there  was  something  else 
surely  goading  the  girl  than  mere  intolerance  of  the  family 
tradition.  The  hesitancy,  the  moral  doubt  of  her  conversation 
with  Langham,  seemed  to  have  vanished  wholly  in  a  kind  of 
acrid  self-assertion. 

Catherine  felt  a  shock  sweep  through  her.  It  was  as  though 
all  the  pieties  of  life,  all  the  sacred  assumptions  and  self- 
surrenders  at  the  root  of  it,  were  shaken,  outraged  by  the  girl's 
tone. 

'  Do  you  ever  remember,'  she  said,  looking  up,  while  her  voice 
trembled,  '  what  papa  wished  when  he  was  dying  ? ' 

It  was  her  last  argument.  To  Rose  she  had  very  seldom  used 
it  in  so  many  words.  Probably,  it  seemed  to  her  too  strong,  too 
sacred,  to  be  often  handled. 

But  Rose  sprang  up,  and  pacing  the  little  workroom  with  her 
white  wrists  locked  behind  her,  she  met  that  argument  with  all 
the  concentrated  passion  which  her  youth  had  for  years  been 
storing  up  against  it.  Catherine  sat  presently  overwhelmed, 
bewildered.  This  language  of  a  proud  and  tameless  individu- 
ality, this  modern  gospel  of  the  divine  right  of  self -development 
— her  soul  loathed  it !  And  yet,  since  that  night  in  Marrisdale, 
there  had  been  a  new  yearning  in  her  to  understand. 

Suddenly,  however.  Rose  stopped,  lost  her  thread.  Two 
figures  were  crossing  the  lawn,  and  their  shadows  were  thrown 
far  beyond  them  by  the  fast  disappearing  sun. 

She  threw  herself  down  on  her  chair  again  with  an  abrupt — 


CHAP,  xvi  SURREY  211 

'  Do  you  see  they  have  come  back  ?    We  must  go  and  dress.' 

And  as  she  spoke  she  was  conscious  of  a  new  sensation  alto- 
gether— the  sensation  of  the  wild  creature  lassoed  on  the  prairie, 
of  the  bird  exchanging  in  an  instant  its  glorious  freedom  of 
flight  for  the  pitiless  meshes  of  the  net.  It  was  stifling — her 
whole  nature  seemed  to  fight  with  it. 

Catherine  rose  and  began  to  put  away  the  books  they  had 
been  covering.  She  had  said  almost  nothing  in  answer  to  Rose's 
tirade.  When  she  was  ready  she  came  and  stood  beside  her 
sister  a  moment,  her  lips  trembling.  At  last  she  stooped  and 
kissed  the  girl — the  kiss  of  deep  suppressed  feeling — and  went 
away.  Rose  made  no  response. 

Unmusical  as  she  was,  Catherine  pined  for  her  sister's  music 
that  evening.  Robert  was  busy  in  his  study,  and  the  hours 
seemed  interminable.  After  a  little  difficult  talk  Langham 
subsided  into  a  book  and  a  corner.  But  the  only  words  of 
which  he  was  conscious  for  long  were  the  words  of  an  inner 
dialogue.  '  I  promised  to  play  for  her. — Go  and  offer  then  ! — 
Madness  !  let  me  keep  away  from  her.  If  she  asks  me,  of  course 
I  will  go.  She  is  much  too  proud,  and  already  she  thinks  me 
guilty  of  a  rudeness.' 

Then,  with  a  shrug,  he  would  fall  to  his  book  again,  abomin- 
ably conscious,  however,  all  the  while  of  the  white  figure 
between  the  lamp  and  the  open  window,  and  of  the  delicate 
head  and  cheek  lit  up  against  the  trees  and  the  soft  August 
dark. 

When  the  time  came  to  go  to  bed  he  got  their  candles  for  the 
two  ladies.  Rose  just  touched  his  hand  with  cool  fingers. 

'  Good-night,  Mr.  Langham.  You  are  going  in  to  smoke  with 
Robert,  I  suppose  ? ' 

Her  bright  eyes  seemed  to  look  him  through.  Their  mocking 
hostility  seemed  to  say  to  him  as  plainly  as  possible :  '  Your 
purgatory  is  over — go,  smoke  and  be  happy  ! ' 

'  I  will  go  and  help  him  wind  up  his  sermon,'  he  said,  with  an 
attempt  at  a  laugh,  and  moved  away. 

Rose  went  upstairs,  and  it  seemed  to  her  that  a  Greek  brow, 
and  a  pair  of  wavering  melancholy  eyes,  went  before  her  in  the 
darkness  chased  along  the  passages  by  the  light  she  held.  She 
gained  her  room,  and  stood  by  the  window,  seized  again  by  that 
stifling  sense  of  catastrophe,  so  strange,  so  undefined.  Then 
she  shook  it  off  with  an  angry  laugh,  and  went  to  work  to 
see  how  far  her  stock  of  light  dresses  had  suffered  by  her  London 
dissipations. 

CHAPTER  XVI 

THE  next  morning  after  breakfast  the  rectory  party  were  in 
the  garden — the  gentlemen  smoking,  Catherine  and  her  sister 
strolling  arm  -  in  -  arm  among  the  flowers.  Catherine's  vague 


212  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

terrors  of  the  morning  before  had  all  taken  to  themselves  wings. 
It  seemed  to  her  that  Hose  and  Mr.  Langham  had  hardly 
spoken  to  each  other  since  she  had  seen  them  walking  about 
together.  Robert  had  already  made  merry  over  his  own  alarms, 
and  hers,  and  she  admitted  he  was  in  the  right.  As  to  her  talk 
with  Rose  her  deep  meditative  nature  was  slowly  working  upon 
and  digesting  it.  Meanwhile,  she  was  all  tenderness  to  her 
sister,  and  there  was  even  a  reaction  of  pity  in  her  heart  towards 
the  lonely  sceptic  who  had  once  been  so  good  to  Robert. 

Robert  was  just  bethinking  himself  that  it  was  time  to  go  off 
to  the  school,  when  they  were  all  startled  by  an  unexpected  visitor 
— a  short  old  lady,  in  a  rusty  black  dress  and  bonnet,  who 
entered  the  drive  and  stood  staring  at  the  rectory  party,  a  tiny 
hand  in  a  black  thread  glove  shading  the  sun  from  a  pair  of 
wrinkled  eyes. 

'  Mrs.  Darcy  ! '  exclaimed  Robert  to  his  wife  after  a  moment's 
perplexity,  and  they  walked  quickly  to  meet  her. 

Rose  and  Langham  exchanged  a  few  commonplaces  till  the 
others  joined  them,  and  then  for  a  while  the  attention  of  every- 
body in  the  group  was  held  by  the  squire's  sister.  She  was 
very  small,  as  thin  and  light  as  thistle-down,  ill-dressed,  and  as 
communicative  as  a  babbling  child.  The  face  and  all  the 
features  were  extraordinarily  minute,  and  moreover,  blanched 
and  etherealised  by  age.  She  had  the  elfish  look  of  a  little 
withered  fairy  godmother.  And  yet  through  it  all  it  was  clear  that 
she  was  a  great  lady.  There  were  certain  poses  and  gestures 
about  her,  which  made  her  thread  gloves  and  rusty  skirts  seem 
a  mere  whim  and  masquerade,  adopted,  perhaps  deliberately, 
from  a  high-bred  love  of  congruity,  to  suit  the  country  lanes. 

She  had  come  to  ask  them  all  to  dinner  at  the  Hall  on  the 
following  evening,  and  she  either  brought  or  devised  on  the 
spot  the  politest  messages  from  the  squire  to  the  new  rector, 
which  pleased  the  sensitive  Robert  and  silenced  for  the  moment 
his  various  misgivings  as  to  Mr.  Wendover's  advent.  Then  she 
stayed  chattering,  studying  Rose  every  now  and  then  out  of  her 
strange  little  eyes,  restless  and  glancing  as  a  bird's,  which  took 
stock  also  of  the  garden,  of  the  flower-beds,  of  Elsmere's  lanky 
frame,  and  of  Elsmere's  handsome  friend  in  the  background.  She 
was  most  odd  when  she  was  grateful,  and  she  was  grateful  for  the 
most  unexpected  things.  She  thanked  Elsmere  effusively  for  com- 
ing to  live  there,  'sacrificing  yourself  so  nobly  to  us  country  folk,' 
and  she  thanked  him  with  an  appreciative  glance  at  Langham,  for 
having  his  clever  friends  to  stay  with  him.  '  The  squire  will  be  so 

E leased.     My  brother,  you  know,  is  very  clever ;  oh  yes,  fright- 
illy  clever !' 

And  then  there  was  a  long  sigh,  at  which  Elsmere  could 
hardly  keep  his  countenance. 

She  thought  it  particularly  considerate  of  them  to  have  been 
to  see  the  squire's  books.  It  would  make  conversation  so  easy 
when  they  came  to  dinner. 


CHAP,  xvi  SURREY  213 

'  Though  I  don't  know  anything  about  his  books.  He  doesn't 
like  women  to  talk  about  books.  He  says  they  only  pretend — 
even  the  clever  ones.  Except,  of  course,  Madame  de  Stael.  He 
can  only  say  she  was  ugly,  and  I  don't  deny  it.  But  I  have 
about  used  up  Madame  de  Stael,'  she  added,  dropping  into 
another  sigh  as  soft  and  light  as  a  child's. 

Robert  was  charmed  with  her,  and  even  Langham  smiled. 
And  as  Mrs.  Darcy  adored  '  clever  men,'  ranking  them,  as  the 
London  of  her  youth  had  ranked  them,  only  second  to  '  persons 
of  birth,'  she  stood  among  them  beaming,  becoming  more  and 
more  whimsical  and  inconsequent,  more  and  more  deliciously 
incalculable,  as  she  expanded.  At  last  she  fluttered  off,  only, 
however,  to  come  hurrying  back,  with  little,  short,  scudding 
steps,  to  implore  them  all  to  come  to  tea  with  her  as  soon  as 
possible  in  the  garden  that  was  her  special  hobby,  and  in  her 
last  new  summer-house. 

'  I  build  two  or  three  every  summer,'  she  said.  '  Now,  there 
are  twenty -one !  Roger  laughs  at  me,'  and  there  was  a 
momentary  bitterness  in  the  little  eerie  face,  '  but  how  can  one 
live  without  hobbies?  That's  one — then  I've  two  more.  My 
album — oh,  you  will  all  write  in  my  album,  won't  you  1  When 
I  was  young  —  when  I  was  Maid  of  Honour '  —  and  she  drew 
herself  up  slightly — 'everybody  had  albums.  Even  the  dear 
Queen  herself  !  I  remember  how  she  made  M.  Guizot  write  in 
it ;  something  quite  stupid,  after  all.  Those  hobbies  —  the 
garden  and  the  album — are  quite  harmless,  aren't  they  ?  They 
hurt  nobody,  do  they?'  Her  voice  dropped  a  little,  with  a 
pathetic  expostulating  intonation  in  it,  as  of  one  accustomed  to 
be  rebuked. 

'  Let  me  remind  you  of  a  saying  of  Bacon's,'  said  Langham, 
studying  her,  and  softened  perforce  into  benevolence. 

'  Yes,  yes,'  said  Mrs.  Darcy  in  a  flutter  of  curiosity. 

'  God  Almighty  first  planted  a  garden,'  he  quoted ;  '  and 
indeed,  it  is  the  purest  of  all  human  pleasures.' 

'Oh,  but  how  delightful /'  cried  Mrs.  Darcy,  clasping  her 
diminutive  hands  in  their  thread  gloves.  '  You  must  write  that 
in  my  album,  Mr.  Langham,  that  very  sentence ;  oh,  how  clever 
of  you  to  remember  it !  What  it  is  to  be  clever  and  have  a 
brain  !  But,  then — I've  another  hobby ' 

Here,  however,  she  stopped,  hung  her  head  and  looked 
depressed.  Robert,  with  a  little  ripple  of  laughter,  begged  her 
to  explain. 

'No,'  she  said  plaintively,  giving  a  quick  uneasy  look  at  him, 
as  though  it  occurred  to  her  that  it  might  some  day  be  his 
pastoral  duty  to  admonish  her.  '  No,  it's  wrong.  I  know  it  is — 
only  I  can't  help  it.  Never  mind.  You'll  know  soon.' 

And  again  she  turned  away,  when,  suddenly,  Rose  attracted 
her  attention,  and  she  stretched  out  a/thin  white  bird-claw  of  a 
hand  and  caught  the  girl's  arm. 

'  There  won't  be  much  to  amuse  j^ou  to-morrow,  my  dear,  and 


214  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

there  ought  to  be — you're  so  pretty  ! '  Rose  blushed  furiously 
and  tried  to  draw  her  hand  away.  '  No,  no  !  don't  mind,  don't 
mind.  I  didn't  at  your  age.  Well,  we'll  do  our  best.  But  your 
own  party  is  so  charming!'  and  she  looked  round  the  little 
circle,  her  gaze  stopping  specially  at  Langham  before  it  returned 
to  Rose.  '  After  all,  you  will  amuse  each  other.' 

Was  there  any  malice  in  the  tiny  withered  creature  1  Rose, 
unsympathetic  and  indifferent  as  youth  commonly  is  when  its 
own  affairs  absorb  it,  had  stood  coldly  outside  the  group  which 
was  making  much  of  the  squire's  sister.  Was  it  so  the  strange 
little  visitor  revenged  herself  ? 

At  any  rate  Rose  was  left  feeling  as  if  some  one  had  pricked 
her.  While  Catherine  and  Elsmere  escorted  Mrs.  Darcy  to  the 
gate  she  turned  to  go  in,  her  head  thrown  back  stag-like,  her 
cheek  still  burning.  Why  should  it  be  always  open  to  the  old 
to  annoy  the  young  with  impunity  ? 

Langham  watched  her  mount  the  first  step  or  two ;  his  eye 
travelled  up  the  slim  figure  so  instinct  with  pride  and  will — 
and  something  in  him  suddenly  gave  way.  It  was  like  a  man 
who  feels  his  grip  relaxing  on  some  attacking  thing  he  has  been 
holding  by  the  throat. 

He  followed  her  hastily. 

'Must  you  go  in?  And  none  of  us  have  paid  our  respects 
yet  to  those  phloxes  in  the  back  garden  ? ' 

Oh  woman — flighty  woman  !  An  instant  before,  the  girl, 
sore  and  bruised  in  every  fibre,  she  only  half  knew  why,  was 
thirsting  that  this  man  might  somehow  offer  her  his  neck  that 
she  might  trample  on  it.  He  offers  it,  and  the  angry  instinct 
wavers,  as  a  man  wavers  in  a  wrestling  match  when  his  oppo- 
nent unexpectedly  gives  ground.  She  paused,  she  turned  her 
white  throat.  His  eyes  upturned  met  hers. 

'  The  phloxes  did  you  say  ? '  she  asked,  coolly  redescending 
the  steps.  '  Then  round  here,  please.' 

She  led  the  way,  he  followed,  conscious  of  an  utter  relaxation 
of  nerve  and  will  which  for  the  moment  had  something  intoxi- 
cating in  it. 

'  There  are  your  phloxes,'  she  said,  stopping  before  a  splendid 
line  of  plants  in  full  blossom.  Her  self-respect  was  whole  again ; 
her  spirits  rose  at  a  bound.  '  I  don't  know  why  you  admire 
them  so  much.  They  have  no  scent,  and  they  are  only  pretty 
in  the  lump,'  and  she  broke  off  a  spike  of  blossom,  studied  it  a 
little  disdainfully,  and  threw  it  away. 

He  stood  beside  her,  the  southern  glow  and  life  of  which  it 
was  intermittently  capable  once  more  lighting  up  the  strange 
face. 

'Give  me  leave  to  enjoy  everything  countrified  more  than 
usual,'  he  said.  '  After  this  morning  it  will  be  so  long  before  I 
see  the  true  country  again.' 

He  looked,  smiling,  rouf>d  on  the  blue  and  white  brilliance  of 
the  sky,  clear  again  after  a  reght  of  rain  ;  on  the  sloping  garden, 


CHAP,  xvi  SURREY  215 

on  the  village  beyond,  on  the  hedge  of  sweet  peas  close  beside 
them,  with  its  blooms 

'  On  tiptoe  for  a  flight, 
With  wings  of  gentle  flush  o'er  delicate  white. ' 

'  Oh  !  Oxford  is  countrified  enough,'  she  said  indifferently, 
moving  down  the  broad  grass-path  which  divided  the  garden 
into  two  equal  portions. 

'  But  I  am  leaving  Oxford,  at  any  rate  for  a  year,'  he  said 
quietly.  '  I  am  going  to  London.' 

Her  delicate  eyebrows  went  up.  '  To  London  ? '  Then,  in  a 
tone  of  mock  meekness  and  sympathy, '  How  you  will  dislike  it ! ' 

'Dislike  it— why?' 

'  Oh  !  because — '  she  hesitated,  and  then  laughed  her  daring 
girlish  laugh — 'because  there  are  so  many  stupid  people  in 
London ;  the  clever  people  are  not  all  picked  out  like  prize 
apples,  as  I  suppose  they  are  in  Oxford.' 

'  At  Oxford! '  repeated  Laiigham,  with  a  kind  of  groan.  '  At 
Oxford  1  You  imagine  that  Oxford  is  inhabited  only  by  clever 
people  ? ' 

'I  can  only  judge  by  what  I  see,'  she  said  demurely.  'Every 
Oxford  man  always  behaves  as  if  he  were  the  cream  of  the 
universe.  Oh !  I  don't  mean  to  be  rude,'  she  cried,  losing  for 
a  moment  her  defiant  control  over  herself,  as  though  afraid  of 
having  gone  too  far.  '  I  am  not  the  least .  disrespectful,  really. 
When  you  and  Robert  talk,  Catherine  and  I  feel  quite  as  humble 
as  we  ought.' 

The  words  were  hardly  out  before  she  could  have  bitten  the 
tongue  that  spoke  them.  He  had  made  her  feel  her  indiscretions 
of  Sunday  night  as  she  deserved  to  feel  them,  and  now  after 
three  minutes  conversation  she  was  on  the  verge  of  fresh  ones. 
Would  she  never  grow  up,  never  behave  like  other  girls  ?  That 
word  humble  I  It  seemed  to  burn  her  memory. 

Before  he  could  possibly  answer  she  barred  the  way  by  a 
question  as  short  and  dry  as  possible — 

'  What  are  you  going  to  London  for  ? ' 

'For  many  reasons,'  he  said,  shrugging  his  shoulders.  'I 
have  told  no  one  yet — not  even  Elsmere.  And  indeed  I  go 
back  to  my  rooms  for  a  while  from  here.  But  as  soon  as  Term 
begins  I  become  a  Londoner.' 

They  had  reached  the  gate  at  the  bottom  of  the  gai'den,  and 
were  leaning  against  it.  She  was  disturbed,  conscious,  lightly 
flushed.  It  struck  her  as  another  gaucherie  on  her  part  that 
she  should  have  questioned  him  as  to  his  plans.  What  did  his 
life  matter  to  her  * 

He  was  looking  away  from  her,  studying  the  half -ruined, 
degraded  manor  house  spread  out  below  them.  Then  suddenly 
he  turned — 

'  If  I  could  imagine  for  a  moment  it  would  interest  you  to 
hear  my  reasons  for  leaving  Oxford,  I  could  not  flatter  myself 


216  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  11 

you  would  see  any  sense  in  them.  I  know  that  Robert  will 
think  them  moonshine;  nay,  more,  that  they  will  give  him 
pain.' 

He  smiled  sadly.  The  tone  of  gentleness,  the  sudden  breach 
in  the  man's  melancholy  reserve  affected  the  girl  beside  him  for 
the  second  time,  precisely  as  they  had  affected  her  the  first  time. 
The  result  of  twenty -four  hours'  resentful  meditation  turned 
out  to  be  precisely  nil.  Her  breath  came  fast,  her  proud  look 
melted,  and  his  quick  sense  caught  the  change  in  an  instant. 

'  Are  you  tired  of  Oxford  ? '  the  poor  child  asked  him,  almost 
shyly. 

'  Mortally  ! '  he  said,  still  smiling.  '  And  what  is  more  im- 
portant still,  Oxford  is  tired  of  me.  I  have  been  lecturing 
there  for  ten  years.  They  have  had  more  than  enough  of  me.' 

'  Oh  !  but  Robert  said '  began  Rose  impetuously,  then 

stopped,  crimson,  remembering  many  things  Robert  had  said. 

'  That  I  helped  him  over  a  few  stiles  r  returned  Langham 
calmly.  '  Yes,  there  was  a  time  when  I  was  capable  of  that — 
there  was  a  time  when  I  could  teach,  and  teach  with  pleasure.' 
He  paused.  Rose  could  have  scourged  herself  .for  the  tremor 
she  felt  creeping  over  her.  Why  should  it  be  to  her  so  new  and 
strange  a  thing  that  a  man,  especially  a  man  of  these  years  and 
this  calibre,  should  confide  in  her,  should  speak  to  her  intimately 
of  himself  ?  After  all,  she  said  to  herself  angrily,  with  a  terri- 
fied sense  of  importance,  she  was  a  child  no  longer,  though  her 
mother  and  sisters  would  treat  her  as  one.  'When  we  were 
chatting  the  other  night,'  he  went  on,  turning  to  her  again  as 
he  stood  leaning  on  the  gate,  '  do  you  know  what  it  was  struck 
me  most  ? ' 

His  tone  had  in  it  the  most  delicate,  the  most  friendly  defer- 
ence. But  Rose  flushed  furiously. 

'  That  girls  are  very  ready  to  talk  about  themselves,  I  imagine,' 
she  said  scornfully. 

'  Not  at  all !  Not  for  a  moment*  No,  but  it  seemed  to  me 
so  pathetic,  so  strange  that  anybody  should  wish  for  anything 
so  much  as  you  wished  for  the  musician's  life.' 

'  And  you  never  wish  for  anything  ? '  she  cried. 

'  When  Elsmere  was  at  college,'  he  said,  smiling,  '  I  believe  I 
wished  he  should  get  a  first  class.  This  year  I  have  certainly 
wished  to  say  good-bye  to  St.  Anselm's,  and  to  turn  my  back 
for  good  and  all  on  my  men.  I  can't  remember  that  I  have 
wished  for  anything  else  for  six  years.' 

She  looked  at  him  perplexed.  Was  his  manner  merely 
languid,  or  was  it  from  him  that  the  emotion  she  felt  invading 
herself  first  started  1  She  tried  to  shake  it  off. 

'And  /  am  just  a  bundle  of  wants,'  she  said,  half -mockingly. 
'  Generally  speaking  I  am  in  the  condition  of  being  ready  to 
barter  all  I  have  for  some  folly  or  other — one  in  the  morning, 
another  in  the  afternoon.  What  have  you  to  say  to  such  people, 
Mr.  Langham  ? ' 


CHAP,  xvi  SURREY  217 

Her  eyes  challenged  him  magnificently,  mostly  out  of  sheer 
nervousness.  But  the  face  they  rested  on  seemed  suddenly  to 
turn  to  stone  before  her.  The  life  died  out  of  it.  It  grew  still 
and  rigid. 

'  Nothing,'  he  said  quietly.  '  Between  them  and  me  there  is 
a  great  gulf  fixed.  I  watch  them  pass,  and  I  say  to  myself : 
"  There  are  the  living — that  is  how  they  look,  how  they  speak  ! 
Realise  once  for  all  that  you  have  nothing  to  do  with  them. 
Life  is  theirs — belongs  to  them.  You  are  already  outside  it. 
Go  your  way,  and  be  a  spectre  among  the  active  and  the  happy 
no  longer."' 

He  leant  his  back  against  the  gate.  Did  he  see  her  ?  Was 
he  conscious  of  her  at  all  in  this  rare  impulse  of  speech  which 
had  suddenly  overtaken  one  of  the  most  withdrawn  and  silent 
of  human  beings  ?  All  her  airs  dropped  off  her ;  a  kind  of 
fright  seized  her ;  and  involuntarily  she  laid  her  hand  on  his 
arm. 

'  Don't — don't — Mr.  Langham  !  Oh,  don't  say  such  things  ! 
Why  should  you  be  so  unhappy  1  Why  should  you  talk  so  1 
Can  no  one  do  anything  ?  Why  do  you  live  so  much  alone  ? 
Is  there  no  one  you  care  about  ? ' 

He  turned.  What  a  vision  !  His  artistic  sense  absorbed  it  in 
an  instant — the  beautiful  tremulous  lip,  the  drawn  white  brow. 
For  a  moment  he  drank  in  the  pity,  the  emotion,  of  those  eyes. 
Then  a  movement  of  such  self -scorn  as  even  he  had  never 
felt  swept  through  him.  He  gently  moved  away ;  her  hand 
dropped. 

'  Miss  Leyburn,'  he  said,  gazing  at  her,  his  olive  face 
singularly  pale,  'don't  waste  your  pity  on  me,  for  Heaven's 
sake.  Some  madness  made  me  behave  as  I  did  just  now.  Years 
ago  the  same  sort  of  idiocy  betrayed  me  to  your  brother  ;  never 
before  or  since.  I  ask  your  pardon,  humbly,'  and  his  tone 
seemed  to  scorch  her,  'that  this  second  fit  or  ranting  should 
have  seized  me  in  your  presence.' 

But  he  could  not  keep  it  up.  The  inner  upheaval  had  gone 
too  far.  He  stopped  and  looked  at  her — piteously,  the  features 
quivering.  It  was  as  though  the  man's  whole  nature  had  for 
the  moment  broken  up,  become  disorganised.  She  could  not  bear 
it.  Some  ghastly  infirmity  seemed  to  have  been  laid  bare  to 
her.  She  held  out  both  her  hands.  Swiftly  he  caught  them, 
stooped,  kissed  them,  let  them  go.  It  was  an  extraordinary 
scene — to  both  a  kind  of  lifetime. 

Then  he  gathered  himself  together  by  a  mighty  effort. 

'  That  was  adorable  of  you,'  he  said  with  a  long  breath.  '  But 
I  stole  it — I  despise  myself.  Why  should  you  pity  me  1  What 
is  there  to  pity  me  for  1  My  troubles,  such  as  I  have,  are  my 
own  making — every  one.' 

And  he  laid  a  sort  of  vindictive  emphasis  on  the  words.  The 
tears  of  excitement  were  in  her  eyes. 

'  Won't  you  let  me  be  your  friend  ? '  she  said,  trembling,  with 


218  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

a  kind  of  reproach.     '  I  thought — the  other  night — we  were  to 

be  friends.     Won't  you  tell  me ' 

'  More  of  yourself  ? '  her  eyes  said,  but  her  voice  failed  her. 
And  as  for  him,  as  he  gazed  at  her,  all  the  accidents  of  circum- 
stance, of  individual  character,  seemed  to  drop  from  her.  He 
forgot  the  difference  of  years  ;  he  saw  her  no  longer  as  she 
was — a  girl  hardly  out  of  the  schoolroom,  vain,  ambitious, 
dangerously  responsive,  on  whose  crude  romantic  sense  he  was 
wantonly  playing ;  she  was  to  him  pure  beauty,  pure  woman. 
For  one  tumultuous  moment  the  cold  critical  instinct  which 
had  been  for  years  draining  his  life  of  all  its  natural  energies 
was  powerless.  It  was  sweet  to  yield,  to  speak,  as  it  had  never 
been  sweet  before. 

_  So,  leaning  over  the  gate,  he  told  her  the  story  of  his  life,  of 
his  cramped  childhood  and  youth,  of  his  brief  moment  of  happi- 
ness and  success  at  college,  of  his  first  attempts  to  make  himself 
a  power  among  younger  men,  of  the  gradual  dismal  failure  of 
all  his  efforts,  the  dying  down  of  desire  and  ambition.  From 
the  general  narrative  there  stood  out  little  pictures  of  individual 
persons  or  scenes,  clear  cut  and  masterly — of  his  father,  the 
Gainsborough  churchwarden  ;  of  his  Methodistical-mother,  who 
had  all  her  life  lamented  her  own  beauty  as  a  special  snare  of 
Satan,  and  who  since  her  husband's  death  had  refused  to  see 
her  son  on  the  ground  that  his  opinions  '  had  vexed  his  father ' ; 
of  his  first  ardent  worship  of  knowledge,  and  passion  to  com- 
municate it ;  and  of  the  first  intuitions  in  lecture,  face  to  face 
with  an  undergraduate,  alone  in  college  rooms,  sometimes  alone 
on  Alpine  heights,  of  something  cold,  impotent  and  baffling  in 
himself,  which  was  to  stand  for  ever  between  him  and  action, 
between  him  and  human  affection ;  the  growth  of  the  critical 
pessimist  sense  which  laid  the  axe  to  the  root  of  enthusiasm 
after  enthusiasm,  friendship  after  friendship — which  made 
other  men  feel  him  inhuman,  intangible,  a  skeleton  at  the 
feast :  and  the  persistence  through  it  all  of  a  kind  of  hunger 
for  lire  and  its  satisfactions,  which  the  will  was  more  and  more 
powerless  to  satisfy :  all  these  Langham  put  into  words  with 
an  extraordinary  magic  and  delicacy  of  phrase.  There  was 
something  in  him  which  found  a  kind  of  pleasure  in  the  long 
analysis,  which  took  pains  that  it  should  be  infinitely  well 
done. 

Rose  followed  him  breathlessly.  If  she  had  known  more  of 
literature  she  would  have  realised  that  she  was  witnessing  a 
masterly  dissection  of  one  of  those  many  morbid  growths  of 
which  our  nineteenth  century  psychology  is  full.  But  she  was 
anything  but  literary,  and  she  could  not  analyse  her  excitement. 
The  man's  physical  charm,  his  melancholy,  the  intensity  of  what 
he  said,  affected,  unsteadied  her  as  music  was  apt  to  affect  her. 
And  through  it  all  there  was  the  strange  girlish  pride  that  this 
should  have  befallen  her  ;  a  first  crude  intoxicating  sense  of  the 
power  over  human  lives  which  was  to  be  hers,  mingled  with  a 


OHAP.  xvi  SURREY  219 

desperate  anxiety  to  be  equal  to  the  occasion,  to  play  her  part 
well 

'  So  you  see,'  said  Langham  at  last,  with  a  great  effort  (to  do 
him  justice)  to  climb  back  on  to  some  ordinary  level  of  con- 
versation ;  '  all  these  transcendentalisms  apart,  I  am  about  the 
most  unfit  man  in  the  world  for  a  college  tutor.  The  under- 
graduates regard  me  as  a  shilly-shallying  pedant.  On  my  part,' 
he  added  drily,  '  I  am  not  slow  to  retaliate.  Every  term  I  live 
I  find  the  young  man  a  less  interesting  animal.  I  regard  the 
whole  university  system  as  a  wretched  sham.  Knowledge  !  It 
has  no  more  to  do  with  knowledge  than  my  boots.' 

And  for  one  curious  instant  he  looked  out  over  the  village, 
his  fastidious  scholar's  soul  absorbed  by  some  intellectual 
irritation,  of  which  Rose  understood  absolutely  nothing.  She 
stood  bewildered,  silent,  longing  childishly  to  speak,  to  influence 
him,  but  not  knowing  what  cue  to  take. 

'And  then — '  he  went  on  presently  (but  was  the  strange 
being  speaking  to  her?)  —  'so  long  as  I  stay  there,  worrying 
those  about  me,  and  eating  my  own  heart  put,  I  am  cut  off  from 
the  only  life  that  might  be  mine,  that  I  might  find  the  strength 
to  live.' 

The  words  were  low  and  deliberate.  After  his  moment  of 
passionate  speech,  and  hers  of  passionate  sympathy,  she  began 
to  feel  strangely  remote  from  him. 

'  Do  you  mean  the  life  of  the  student  ? '  she  asked  him  after  a 
pause,  timidly. 

Her  voice  recalled  him.    He  turned  and  smiled  at  her. 

'  Of  the  dreamer,  rather.' 

And  as  her  eyes  still  questioned,  as  he  was  still  moved  by  the 
spell  of  her  responsiveness,  he  let  the  new  wave  of  feeling  break 
in  words.  Vaguely  at  first,  and  then  with  a  growing  flame  and 
force,  he  fell  to  describing  to  her  what  the  life  of  thought  may 
be  to  the  thinker,  and  those  marvellous  moments  which  belong 
to  that  life  when  the  mind  which  has  divorced  itself  from  desire 
and  sense  sees  spread  out  before  it  the  vast  realms  of  knowledge, 
and  feels  itself  close  to  the  secret  springs  and  sources  of  being. 
And  as  he  spoke,  his  language  took  an  ampler  turn,  the  element 
of  smallness  which  attaches  to  all  mere  personal  complaint 
vanished,  his  words  flowed,  became  eloquent,  inspired,  till  the 
bewildered  child  beside  him,  warm  through  and  through  as  she 
was  with  youth  and  passion,  felt  for  an  instant  by  sheer 
fascinated  sympathy  the  cold  spell,  the  ineffable  prestige,  of  the 
thinker's  voluntary  death  in  life. 

But  only  for  an  instant.  Then  the  natural  sense  of  chill 
smote  her  to  the  heart. 

'  You  make  me  shiver,'  she  cried,  interrupting  him.  '  Have 
those  strange  things — I  don't  understand  them — made  you 
happy  ?  Can  they  make  any  one  happy  ?  Oh  no,  no  !  Happi- 
ness is  to  be  got  from  living,  seeing,  experiencing,  making 
friends,  enjoying  nature  !  Look  at  the  world,  Mr.  Langham  ! ' 


220  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

she  said,  with  bright  cheeks,  half  smiling  at  her  own  magnilo- 
quence, her  hand  waving  over  the  view  before  them.  '  What 
has  it  done  that  you  should  hate  it  so?  If  you  can't  put  up 
with  people  you  might  love  nature.  I — I  can't  be  content  with 
nature,  because  I  want  some  life  first.  Up  in  Whindale  there  is 
too  much  nature,  not  enough  life.  But  if  I  had  got  through  life 
— if  it  had  disappointed  me — then  I  should  love  nature.  I  keep 
saying  to  the  mountains  at  home  :  "  Not  now,  not  now  ;  I  want 
something  else,  but  afterwards  if  I  can't  get  it,  or  if  I  get  too 
much  of  it,  why  then  I  will  love  you,  live  with  you.  You  are 
my  second  string,  my  reserve.  You — and  art — and  poetry." ' 

'But  everything  depends  on  feeling,'  he  said  softly,  but 
lightly,  as  though  to  keep  the  conversation  from  slipping  back 
into  those  vague  depths  it  had  emerged  from  ;  '  and  if  one  has 
forgotten  how  to  feel — if  when  one  sees  or  hears  something 
beautiful  that  used  to  stir  one,  one  can  only  say  "  I  remember 
it  moved  me  once  ! " — if  feeling  dies,  like  life,  like  physical  force, 
but  prematurely,  long  before  the  rest  of  the  man  ! ' 

She  gave  a  long  quivering  sigh  of  passionate  antagonism. 

'  Oh,  I  cannot  imagine  it ! '  she  cried.  '  I  shall  feel  to  my 
last  hour.'  Then,  after  a  pause,  in  another  tone,  'But,  Mr. 
Langham,  you  say  music  excites  you,  Wagner  excites  you  ? ' 

'  Yes,  a  sort  of  strange  second  life  I  can  still  get  out  of  music,' 
he  admitted,  smiling. 

'Well  then,'  and  she  looked  at  him  persuasively,  'why  not 
give  yourself  up  to  music  ?  It  is  so  easy — so  little  trouble  to 
one's  self — it  just  takes  you  and  carries  you  away.' 

Then,  for  the  first  time,  Langham  became  conscious — prob- 
ably through  these  admonitions  of  hers — that  the  situation  had 
absurdity  in  it. 

'It  is  not  my  metier]  he  said  hastily.  'The  self  that  enjoys 
music  is  an  outer  self,  and  can  only  bear  with  it  for  a  short 
time.  No,  Miss  Leyburn,  I  shall  leave  Oxford,  the  college  will 
sing  a  Te  Deum,  I  shall  settle  down  in  London,  I  shall  keep  a 
big  book  going,  and  cheat  the  years  after  all,  I  suppose,  as  well 
as  most  people.' 

'  And  you  will  know,  you  will  remember,'  she  said  faltering, 
reddening,  her  womanliness  forcing  the  words  out  of  her,  '  that 
you  have  friends  :  Robert^— my  sister — all  of  us  1 ' 

He  faced  her  with  a  little  quick  movement.  And  as  their 
eyes  met  each  was  struck  once  more  with  the  personal  beauty 
of  the  other.  His  eyes  shone — their  black  depths  seemed  all 
tenderness. 

'  I  will  never  forget  this  visit,  this  garden,  this  hour,'  he  said 
slowly,  and  they  stood  looking  at  each  other.  Rose  felt  herself 
swept  off  her  feet  into  a  world  of  tragic  mysterious  emotion. 
She  all  but  put  her  hand  into  his  again,  asking  him  childishly 
to  hope,  to  be  consoled.  But  the  maidenly  impulse  restrained 
her,  and  once  more  he  leant  on  the  gate,  burying  his  face  in 
his  hands. 


CHAP.  XVTI  SURREY  221 

Suddenly  he  felt  himself  utterly  tired,  relaxed.  Strong 
nervous  reaction  set  in.  What  had  all  this  scene,  this  tragedy, 
been  about  ?  And  then  in  another  instant  was  that  sense  of 
the  ridiculous  again  clamouring  to  be  heard.  He — the  man  of 
thirty-five — confessing  himself,  making  a  tragic  scene,  playing 
Manfred  or  Cain  to  this  adorable  half -fledged  creature,  whom 
he  had  known  five  days  !  Supposing  Elsmere  had  been  there 
to  hear — Elsmere  with  his  sane  eye,  his  laugh  !  As  he  leant 
over  the  gate  he  found  himself  quivering  with  impatience  to 
be  away — by  himself — out  of  reach — the  critic  in  him  making 
the  most  bitter  remorseless  mock  of  all  these  heroics  and 
despairs  the  other  self  had  been  indulging  in.  But  for  the 
life  of  him  he  could  not  find  a  word  to  say — a  move  to  make. 
He  stood  hesitating,  gauche,  as  usual. 

'  Do  you  know,  Mr.  Langham,'  said  Rose  lightly,  by  his  side, 
'  that  there  is  no  time  at  all  left  for  you  to  give  me  good  advice 
in?  That  is  an  obligation  still  hanging  over  you.  I  don't 
mean  to  release  you  from  it,  but  if  I  don't  go  in  now  and  finish 
the  covering  of  those  library  books,  the  youth  of  Murewell  will 
be  left  without  any  literature  till  Heaven  knows  when  ! ' 

He  could  have  blessed  her  for  the  tone,  for  the  escape  into 
common  mundanity. 

'  Hang  literature — hang  the  parish  library  ! '  he  said  with  a 
laugh  as  he  moved  after  her.  Yet  his  real  inner  feeling  towards 
that  parish  library  was  one  of  infinite  friendliness. 

'  Hear  these  men  of  letters ! '  she  said  scornfully.  But  she 
was  happy ;  there  was  a  glow  on  her  cheek. 

A  bramble  caught  her  dress ;  she  stopped  and  laid  her  white 
hand  to  it,  but  in  vain.  He  knelt  in  an  instant,  and  between 
them  they  wrenched  it  away,  but  not  till  those  soft  slim  fingers 
had  several  times  felt  the  neighbourhood  of  his  brown  ones,  and 
till  there  had  flown  through  and  through  him  once  more,  as  she 
stooped  over  him,  the  consciousness  that  she  was  young,  that 
she  was  beautiful,  that  she  had  pitied  him  so  sweetly,  that  they 
were  alone. 

'Rose!' 

It  was  Catherine  calling — Catherine,  who  stood  at  the  end 
of  the  grass-path,  with  eyes  all  indignation  and  alarm. 

Langham  rose  quickly  from  the  ground. 

He  felt  as  though  the  gods  had  saved  him — or  damned  him — 
which  ? 


CHAPTER  XVII 

MUBEWELL  RECTORY  during  the  next  forty-eight  hours  was  the 
scene  of  much  that  might  have  been  of  interest  to  a  psychologist 
gifted  with  the  power  of  divining  his  neighbours. 

In  the  first  place  Catherine's  terrors  were  all  alive  again 


222  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

Robert  had  never  seen  her  so  moved  since  those  days  of  storm 
and  stress  before  their  engagement. 

'  I  cannot  bear  it ! '  she  said  to  Robert  at  night  in  their  room. 
'  I  cannot  bear  it !  I  hear  it  always  in  my  ears  :  "  What  hast 
thou  done  with  thy  sister?"  Oh,  Robert,  don't  mind,  dear, 
though  he  is  your  friend.  My  father  would  have  shrunk  from 
him  with  horror — An  alien  from  the  household  of  faith  !  An 
enemy  to  the  Cross  of  Christ  / ' 

She  flung  out  the  words  with  low  intense  emphasis  and 
frowning  brow,  standing  rigid  by  the  window,  her  hands  locked 
behind  her.  Robert  stood  by  her  much  perplexed,  feeling  him- 
self a  good  deal  of  a  culprit,  but  inwardly  conscious  that  he 
knew  a  great  deal  more  about  Langham  than  she  did. 

'  My  dear  wine,'  he  said  to  her,  '  I  am  certain  Langham  has 
no  intention  of  marrying.' 

'  Then  more  shame  for  him,'  cried  Catherine,  flushing.  '  They 
could  not  have  looked  more  conscious,  Robert,  when  I  found 
them  together,  if  he  had  just  proposed.' 

'  What,  in  five  days  ? '  said  Robert,  more  than  half  inclined 
to  banter  his  wife.  Then  he  fell  into  meditation  as  Catherine 
made  no  answer.  '  I  believe  with  men  of  that  sort,'  he  said  at 
last,  '  relations  to  women  are  never  more  than  half -real — always 
more  or  less  literature — acting.  Langham  is  tasting  an  experi- 
ence, to  be  bottled  up  for  future  use.' 

It  need  hardly  be  said,  however,  that  Catherine  got  small 
consolation  out  of  this  point  of  view.  It  seemed  to  her  Robert 
did  not  take  the  matter  quite  rightly. 

'  After  all,  darling,'  he  said  at  last,  kissing  her,  '  you  can  act 
dragon  splendidly;  you  have  already — so  can  I.  And  you 
really  cannot  make  me  believe  in  anything  very  tragic  in  a 
week.' 

But  Catherine  was  conscious  that  she  had  already  played  the 
dragon  hard,  to  very  little  purpose.  In  the  forty  hours  that 
intervened  between  the  scene  in  the  garden  and  the  squire's 
dinner-party,  Robert  was  always  wanting  to  carry  off  Langham, 
Catherine  was  always  asking  Rose's  help  in  some  household 
business  or  other.  In  vain.  Langham  said  to  himself  calmly, 
this  time,  that  Elsmere  and  his  wife  were  making  a  foolish  mis- 
take in  supposing  that  his  friendship  with  Miss  Leyburn  was 
anything  to  be  alarmed  about,  that  they  would  soon  be  amply 
convinced  of  it  themselves,  and  meanwhile  he  should  take  his 
own  way.  And  as  for  Rose,  they  had  no  sooner  turned  back  all 
three  from  the  house  to  the  garden  than  she  had  divined  every- 
thing in  Catherine's  mind,  and  set  herself  against  her  sister 
with  a  wilful  force  in  which  many  a  past  irritation  found 
expression. 

How  Catherine  hated  the  music  of  that  week  !  It  seemed  to 
her  she  never  opened  the  drawing-room  door  but  she  saw  Lang- 
ham  at  the  piano,  his  head  with  its  crown  of  glossy,  curling 
black  hair,  and  his  eyes  lit  with  unwonted  gleams  of  laughter 


CHAP,  xvn  SURREY  223 

and  sympathy,  turned  towards  Rose,  who  was  either  chatting 
wildly  to  him,  mimicking  the  airs  of  some  professional,  or 
taking  off  the  ways  of  some  famous  teacher  ;  or  else,  which  was 
worse,  playing  with  all  her  soul,  flooding  the  house  with  sound 
— now  as  soft  and  delicate  as  first  love,  now  as  full  and  grand 
as  storm  waves  on  an  angry  coast.  And  the  sister  going  with 
compressed  lip  to  her  work-table  would  recognise  sorely  that 
never  had  the  girl  looked  so  handsome,  and  never  had  the 
lightnings  of  a  wayward  genius  played  so  finely  about  her. 

As  to  Langham,  it  may  well  be  believed  that  after  the  scene 
in  the  garden  he  had  rated,  satirised,  examined  himself  in  the 
most  approved  introspective  style.  One  half  of  him  declared 
that  scene  to  have  been  the  heights  of  melodramatic  absurdity  ; 
the  other  thought  of  it  with  a  thrill  of  tender  gratitude  towards 
the  young  pitiful  creature  who  had  evoked  it.  After  all,  why, 
because  he  was  alone  in  the  world  and  must  remain  so,  should 
he  feel  bound  to  refuse  this  one  gift  of  the  gods,  the  delicate 
passing  gift  of  a  girl's — a  child's  friendship?  As  for  her,  the 
man's  very  real,  though  wholly  morbid,  modesty  scouted,  the 
notion  of  love  on  her  side.  He  was  a  likely  person  for  a  beauty 
on  the  threshold  of  life  and  success  to  fall  in  love  with ;  but  she 
meant  to  be  kind  to  him,  and  he  smiled  a  little  inward  indul- 
gent smile  over  her  very  evident  compassion,  her  very  evident 
intention  of  reforming  him,  reconciling  him  to  life.  And, 
finally,  he  was  incapable  of  any  further  resistance.  He  had 
gone  too  far  with  her.  Let  her  do  what  she  would  with  him, 
dear  child,  with  the  sharp  tongue  and  the  soft  heart,  and  the 
touch  of  genius  and  brilliancy  which  made  her  future  so  inter- 
esting !  He  called  his  age  and  his  disillusions  to  the  rescue ; 
he  posed  to  himself  as  stooping  to  her  in  some  sort  of  elder- 
brotherly  fashion ;  and  if  every  now  and  then  some  disturbing 
memory  of  that  strange  scene  between  them  would  come  to 
make  his  present  r6le  less  plausible,  or  some  whim  of  hers  made 
it  difficult  to  play,  why  then  at  bottom  there  was  always  the 
consciousness  that  sixty  hours,  or  thereabouts,  would  see  him 
safely  settled  in  that  morning  train  to  London.  Throughout  it 
is  probable  that  that  morning  train  occupied  the  saving  back- 
ground of  his  thoughts. 

The  two  days  passed  by,  and  the  squire's  dinner-party 
arrived.  About  seven  on  the  Thursday  evening  a  party  of 
four  might  have  been  seen  hurrying  across  the  park — Langham 
and  Catherine  in  front,  Elsmere  and  Rose  behind.  Catherine 
had  arranged  it  so,  and  Langham,  who  understood  perfectly 
that  his  friendship  with  her  young  sister  was  not  at  all  to  Mrs. 
Elsmere's  taste,  and  who  had  by  now  taken  as  much  of  a  dislike 
to  her  as  his  nature  was  capable  of,  was  certainly  doing  nothing 
to  make  his  walk  with  her  otherwise  than  difficult.  And  every 
now  and  then  some  languid  epigram  would  bring  Catherine  s 
eyes  on  him  with  a  fiery  gleam  in  their  gray  depths.  Oh,  four- 
teen more  hours  and  she  would  have  shut  the  rectory  gate  on 


224  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

this  most  unwelcome  of  intruders !  She  had  never  felt  so 
vindictively  anxious  to  see  the  last  of  any  one  in  her  life. 
There  was  in  her  a  vehemence  of  antagonism  to  the  man's 
manner,  his  pessimism,  his  infidelity,  his  very  ways  of  speaking 
and  looking,  which  astonished  even  herself. 

Robert's  eager  soul  meanwhile,  for  once  irresponsive  to 
Catherine's,  was  full  of  nothing  but  the  squire.  At  last  the 
moment  was  come,  and  that  dumb  spiritual  friendship  he  had 
formed  through  these  long  months  with  the  philosopher  and  the 
savant  was  to  be  tested  by  sight  and  speech  of  the  man.  He 
bade  himself  a  hundred  times  pitch  his  expectations  low.  But 
curiosity  and  hope  were  keen,  in  spite  of  everything. 

Ah,  those  parish  worries  !  Robert  caught  the  smoke  of  Mile 
End  in  the  distance,  curling  above  the  twilight  woods,  and  laid 
about  him  vigorously  with  his  stick  on  the  squire's  shrubs,  as 
he  thought  of  those  poisonous  hovels,  those  ruined  lives  !  But, 
after  all,  it  might  be  mere  ignorance,  and  that  wretch  Hens- 
lowe  might  have  been  merely  trading  on  his  master's  morbid 
love  of  solitude. 

And  then — all  men  have  their  natural  conceits.  Robert 
Elsmere  would  not  have  been  the  very  human  creature  he  was 
if,  half-consciously,  he  had  not  counted  a  good  deal  on  his  own 
powers  of  influence.  Life  had  been  to  him  so  far  one  long 
social  success  of  the  best  kind.  Very  likely  as  he  walked  on  to 
the  great  house  over  whose  threshold  lay  the  answer  to  the 
enigma  of  months,  his  mind  gradually  filled  with  some  naive 
young  dream  of  winning  the  squire,  playing  him  with  all  sorts 
of  honest  arts,  beguiling  him  back  to  life — to  his  kind. 

Those  friendly  messages  of  his  through  Mrs.  Darcy  had  been 
very  pleasant. 

'  I  wonder  whether  my  Oxford  friends  have  been  doing  me  a 
good  turn  with  the  squire,'  he  said  to  Rose,  laughing.  'He 
knows  the  provost,  of  course.  If  they  talked  me  over  it  is  to  be 
hoped  my  scholarship  didn't  come  up.  Precious  little  the 
provost  used  to  think  of  my  abilities  for  Greek  prose  ! ' 

Rose  yawned  a  little  behind  her  gloved  hand.  Robert  had 
already  talked  a  good  deal  about  the  squire,  and  he  was  cer- 
tainly the  only  person  in  the  group  who  was  thinking  of  him. 
Even  Catherine,  absorbed  in  other  anxieties,  had  forgotten  to 
feel  any  thrill  at  their  approaching  introduction  to  the  man 
who  must  of  necessity  mean  so  much  to  herself  and  Robert. 

'Mr.  and  Mrs.  Robert  Elsmere,'  said  the  butler,  throwing 
open  the  carved  and  gilded  doors. 

Catherine — following  her  husband,  her  fine  grave  head  and 
beautiful  neck  held  a  little  more  erect  than  usual — was  at  first 
conscious  of  nothing  but  the  dazzle  of  western  light  which 
flooded  the  room,  striking  the  stands  of  Japanese  lilies,  and  the 
white  figure  of  a  clown  in  the  famous  Watteau  opposite  the 
window. 


CHAP,  xvn  SURREY  225 

Then  she  found  herself  greeted  by  Mrs.  Darcy,  whose  odd 
habit  of  holding  her  lace  handkerchief  in  her  right  hand  on 
festive  occasions  only  left  her  two  fingers  for  her  guests.  The 
mistress  of  the  Hall — as  diminutive  and  elf -like  as  ever  in  spite 
of  the  added  dignity  of  her  sweeping  silk  and  the  draperies  of 
black  lace  with  which  her  tiny  head  was  adorned — kept  tight 
hold  of  Catherine,  and  called  a  gentleman  standing  in  a  group 
just  behind  her. 

'  Roger,  here  are  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Robert  Elsmere.  Mr.  Elsmere, 
the  squire  remembers  you  in  petticoats,  and  I'm  not  sure  that 
I  don  t  too.' 

Robert,  smiling,  looked  beyond  her  to  the  advancing  figure 
of  the  squire,  but  if  Mr.  Wendover  heard  his  sister's  remark  he 
took  no  notice  of  it.  He  held  out  his  hand  stiffly  to  Robert, 
bowed  to  Catherine  and  Rose  before  extending  to  them  the 
same  formal  greeting,  and  just  recognised  Langham  as  having 
met  him  at  Oxford. 

Having  done  so  he  turned  back  to  the  knot  of  people  with 
whom  he  had  been  engaged  on  their  entrance.  His  manner  had 
been  reserve  itself.  The  hauteur  of  the  grandee  on  his  own 
ground  was  clearly  marked  in  it,  and  Robert  could  not  help 
fancying  that  towards  himself  there  had  even  been  something 
more.  And  not  one  of  those  phrases  which,  under  the  circum- 
stances, would  have  been  so  easy  and  so  gracious,  as  to  Robert's 
childish  connection  with  the  place,  or  as  to  the  squire's  remem- 
brance of  his  father,  even  though  Mrs.  Darcy  had  given  him  a 
special  opening  of  the  kind. 

The  young  rector  instinctively  drew  himself  together,  like 
one  who  has  received  a  blow,  as  he  moved  across  to  the  other- 
side  of  the  fireplace  to  shake  hands  with  the  worthy  family 
doctor,  old  Meyrick,  who  was  already  well  known  to  him. 
Catherine,  in  some  discomfort,  for  she  too  had  felt  their  re- 
ception at  the  squire's  hands  to  be  a  chilling  one,  sat  down  to 
talk  to  Mrs.  Darcy,  disagreeably  conscious  the  while  that  Rose 
and  Langham  left  to  themselves  were  practically  tete-a-tete,  and 
that,  moreover,  a  large  stand  of  flowers  formed  a  partial  screen 
between  her  and  them.  She  could  see,  however,  the  gleam  of 
Rose's  upstretched  neck,  as  Langham,  who  was  leaning  on  the 
piano  beside  her,  bent  down  to  talk  to  her ;  and  when  she 
looked  next  she  caught  a  smiling  motion  of  Langham's  head 
and  eyes  towards  the  Romney  portrait  of  Mr.  Wendover's 
grandmother,  and  was  certain  when  he  stooped  afterwards  to 
say  something  to  his  companion,  that  he  was  commenting  on  a 
certain  surface  likeness  there  was  between  her  and  the  young 
auburn-haired  beauty  of  the  picture.  Hateful !  And  they 
would  be  sent  down  to  dinner  together  to  a  certainty. 

The  other  guests  were  Lady  Charlotte  Wynnstay,  a  cousin  of 
the  squire — a  tall,  imperious,  loud-voiced  woman,  famous  in 
London  society  for  her  relationships,  her  audacity,  and  the  salon 
which  in  one  way  or  another  she  managed  to  collect  round  her ; 

Q 


226  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  11 

her  dark,  thin,  irritable-looking  husband ;  two  neighbouring 
clerics — the  first,  by  name  Longstafie,  a  somewhat  inferior 
specimen  of  the  cloth,  whom  Robert  cordially  disliked ;  and  the 
other,  Mr.  Bickerton,  a  gentle  Evangelical,  one  of  those  men 
who  help  to  ease  the  harshness  of  a  cross-grained  world,  and  to 
reconcile  the  cleverer  or  more  impatient  folk  in  it  to  the  worries 
of  living. 

Lady  Charlotte  was  already  known  by  name  to  the  Elsmeres 
as  the  aunt  of  one  of  their  chief  friends  of  the  neighbourhood — 
the  wife  of  a  neighbouring  squire  whose  property  joined  that 
of  Murewell  Hall,  one  Lady  Helen  Varley,  of  whom  more 
presently.  Lady  Charlotte  was  the  sister  of  the  Duke  of 
Sedbergh,  one  of  the  greatest  of  dukes,  and  the  sister  also  of 
Lady  Helen's  mother,  Lady  Wanless.  Lady  Wanless  had  died 
prematurely,  and  her  two  younger  children,  Helen  and  Hugh 
Flaxman,  creatures  both  of  them  of  unusually  fine  and  fiery 
quality,  had  owed  a  good  deal  to  their  aunt.  There  were 
family  alliances  between  the  Sedberghs  and  the  Wendovers,  and 
Lady  Charlotte  made  a  point  of  keeping  up  with  the  squire. 
She  adored  cynics  and  people  who  said  piquant  things,  and  it 
amused  her  to  make  her  large  tyrannous  hand  felt  by  the 
squire's  timid,  crack-brained,  ridiculous  little  sister. 

As  to  Dr.  Meyrick,  he  was  tall  and  gaunt  as  Don  Quixote. 
His  gray  hair  made  a  ragged  fringe  round  his  straight-backed 
head ;  he  wore  an  old-fashioned  neck-cloth ;  his  long  body  had 
a  perpetual  stoop,  as  though  of  deference,  and  his  spectacled 
look  of  mild  attentiveness  had  nothing  in  common  with  that 
medical  self-assurance  with  which  we  are  all  nowadays  so 
familiar.  Robert  noticed  presently  that  when  he  addressed 
Mrs.  Darcy  he  said  '  Ma'am,'  making  no  bones  at  all  about  it ; 
and  his  manner  generally  was  the  manner  of  one  to  whom  class 
distinctions  were  the  profoundest  reality,  and  no  burden  at  all 
on  a  naturally  humble  temper.  Dr.  Baker,  of  Whindale,  accus- 
tomed to  trouncing  Mrs.  Beaton,  would  have  thought  him  a 
poor  creature. 

When  dinner  was  announced,  Robert  found  himself  assigned 
to  Mrs.  Darcy ;  the  squire  took  Lady  Charlotte.  Catherine 
fell  to  Mr.  Bickerton,  Rose  to  Mr.  Wynnstay,  and  the  rest  found 
their  way  in  as  best  they  could.  Catherine  seeing  the  distri- 
bution was  happy  for  a  moment,  till  she  found  that  if  Rose  was 
covered  on  her  right  she  was  exposed  to  the  full  fire  of  the 
enemy  on  her  left,  in  other  words  that  Langham  was  placed 
between  her  and  Dr.  Meyrick. 

'  Are  your  spirits  damped  at  all  by  this  magnificence  ? '  Lang- 
ham  said  to  his  neighbour  as  they  sat  down.  The  table  was 
entirely  covered  with  Japanese  lilies,  save  for  the  splendid 
silver  candelabra  from  which  the  light  flashed,  first  on  to  the 
faces  of  the  guests,  and  then  on  to  those  of  the  family  portraits, 
hung  thickly  round  the  room.  A  roof  embossed  with  gilded 
Tudor  roses  on  a  ground  of  black  oak  hung  above  them  ;  a  rose- 


I:HAP.  xvn  SURREY  227 

water  dish  in  which  the  Merry  Monarch  had  once  dipped  his 
hands,  and  which  bore  a  record  of  the  fact  in  the  inscription  on 
its  sides,  stood  before  them  ;  and  the  servants  were  distributing 
to  each  guest  silver  soup-plates  which  had  been  the  gift  of 
Sarah,  Duchess  of  Marlborough,  in  some  moment  of  generosity 
or  calculation,  to  the  Wendover  of  her  day. 

'  Oh  dear,  no  !'  said  Hose  carelessly.  '  1  don't  know  how  it  is, 
I  think  I  must  have  been  born  for  a  palace.' 

Langham  looked  at  her,  at  the  daring  harmony  of  colour 
made  by  the  reddish  gold  of  her  hair,  the  warm  whiteness  of  her 
skin,  and  the  brown -pink  tints  of  her  dress,  at  the  crystals 
playing  the  part  of  diamonds  on  her  beautiful  neck,  and 
remembered  Robert's  remarks  to  him.  The  same  irony  mingled 
with  the  same  bitterness  returned  to  him,  and  the  elder  brother's 
attitude  became  once  more  temporarily  difficult.  '  Who  is  your 
neighbour  ? '  he  inquired  of  her  presently. 

'Lady  Charlotte's  husband,'  she  answered  mischievously, 
under  her  breath.  '  One  needn't  know  much  more  about  him  I 
imagine ! ' 

'  And  that  man  opposite  ? ' 

'  Robert's  pet  aversion,'  she  said  calmly,  without  a  change  of 
countenance,  so  that  Mr.  LongstafFe  opposite,  who  was  studying 
her  as  he  always  studied  pretty  young  women,  stared  at  her 
through  her  remark  in  sublime  ignorance  of  its  bearing. 

'  And  your  sister's  neighbour  r 

'  I  can't  hit  him  off  in  a  sentence,  he's  too  good  ! '  said  Rose 
laughing ;  '  all  I  can  say  is  that  Mrs.  Bickerton  has  too  many 
children,  and  the  children  have  too  many  ailments  for  her  ever 
to  dine  out.' 

'That  will  do;  I  see  the  existence,'  said  Langham  with  a 
shrug.  'But  he  has  the  look  of  an  apostle,  though  a  rather 
hunted  one.  Probably  nobody  here,  except  Robert,  is  fit  to  tie 
his  shoes.' 

'  The  squire  could  hardly  be  called  empresse,'  said  Rose,  after 
a  second,  with  a  curl  of  her  red  lips.  Mr.  Wynnstay  was  still 
safely  engaged  with  Mrs.  Darcy,  and  there  was  a  buzz  of  talk 
largely  sustained  by  Lady  Charlotte. 

'  No,'  Langham  admitted  ;  '  the  manners  I  thought  were  not 
quite  equal  to  the  house.' 

'What  possible  reason  could  he  have  for  treating  Robert 
with  those  airs  ? '  said  Rose  indignantly,  ready  enough  in  girl 
fashion  to  defend  her  belongings  against  the  outer  world.  'He 
ought  to  be  only  too  glad  to  have  the  opportunity  of  knowing 
him  and  making  friends  with  him.' 

'You  are  a  sister  worth  having  ;'  and  Langham  smiled  at  her 
as  she  leant  back  in  her  chair,  her  white  arms  and  wrists  lying 
on  her  lap,  and  her  slightly  flushed  face  turned  towards  him. 
They  had  been  on  these  pleasant  terms  of  camaraderie  all  day, 
and  the  intimacy  between  them  had  been  still  making  strides. 

'  Do  you  imagine  I  don't  appreciate  Robert  because  I  make 


228  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

bad  jokes  about  the  choir  and  the  clothing  club?'  she  asked 
him,  with  a  little  quick  repentance  passing  like  a  shadow 
through  her  eyes.  'I  always  feel  I  play  an  odious  part  here. 
I  can  t  like  it — I  can't — their  life.  I  should  hate  it !  And 
yet '  _ 

She  sighed  remorsefully,  and  Langham,  who  five  minutes 
before  could  have  wished  her  to  be  always  smiling,  could  now 
have  almost  asked  to  fix  her  as  she  was :  the  eyes  veiled,  the 
soft  lips  relaxed  in  this  passing  instant  of  gravity. 

'  Ah  !  I  forgot — '  and  she  looked  up  again  with  light  be- 
witching appeal — 'there  is  still  that  question,  my  poor  little 
question  of  Sunday  night,  when  I  was  in  that  fine  moral  frame 
of  mind  and  you  were  near  giving  me,  I  believe,  the  only  good 
advice  you  ever  gave  in  your  life, — how  shamefully  you  have 
treated  it ! ' 

One  brilliant  look,  which  Catherine  for  her  torment  caught 
from  the  other  side  of  the  table,  and  then  in  an  instant  the 
quick  face  changed  and  stiffened.  Mr.  Wynnstay  was  speaking 
to  her,  and  Langham  was  left  to  the  intermittent  mercies  of  Dr. 
Meyrick,  who  though  glad  to  talk,  was  also  quite  content,  ap- 
parently, to  judge  from  the  radiant  placidity  of  his  look,  to 
examine  his  wine,  study  his  menu,  and  enjoys  his  entrees  in 
silence,  undisturbed  by  the  uncertain  pleasures  of  conversa- 
tion. 

Eobert,  meanwhile,  during  the  first  few  minutes,  in  which 
Mr.  Wynnstay  had  been  engaged  in  some  family  talk  with  Mrs. 
Darcy,  had  been  allowing  himself  a  little  deliberate  study  of 
Mr.  Wendover  across  what  seemed  the  safe  distance  of  a  long 
table.  The  squire  was  talking  shortly  and  abruptly,  yet  with 
occasional  flashes  of  shrill  ungainly  laughter,  to  Lady  Char- 
lotte, who  seemed  to  have  no  sort  of  fear  of  him  and  to  find  him 
good  company,  and  every  now  and  then  Robert  saw  him  turn 
to  Catherine  on  the  other  side  of  him,  and  with  an  obvious 
change  of  manner  address  some  formal  and  constrained  remark 
to  her. 

Mr.  Wendover  was  a  man  of  middle  height  and  loose  bony 
frame,  of  which,  as  Robert  had  noticed  in  the  drawing-room, 
all  the  lower  half  had  a  thin  and  shrunken  look.  But  the 
shoulders,  which  had  the  scholar's  stoop,  and  the  head  were 
massive  and  squarely  outlined.  The  head  was  specially  remark- 
able for  its  great  breadth  and  comparative  flatness  above  the 
eyes,  and  for  the  way  in  which  the  head  itself  dwarfed  the  face, 
which,  as  contrasted  with  the  large  angularity  of  the  skull,  had 
a  pinched  and  drawn  look.  The  hair  was  reddish-gray,  the  eyes 
small,  but  deep -set  under  fine  brows,  and  the  thin -lipped 
wrinkled  mouth  and  long  chin  had  a  look  of  hard  sarcastic 
strength. 

Generally  the  countenance  was  that  of  an  old  man,  the 
furrows  were  deep,  the  skin  brown  and  shrivelled.  But  the 
alertness  and  force  of  the  man's  whole  expression  showed  that, 


CHAP,  xvii  SURREY  229 

if  the  body  was  beginning  to  fail,  the  mind  was  as  fresh  and 
masterful  as  ever.  His  hair,  worn  rather  longer  than  usual, 
his  loosely-fitting  dress  and  slouching  carriage  gave  him  an  un- 
English  look.  In  general  he  impressed  Robert  as  a  sort  of 
curious  combination  of  the  foreign  savant  with  the  English 
grandee,  for  while  his  manner  showed  a  considerable  conscious- 
ness of  birth  and  social  importance,  the  gulf  between  him  and 
the  ordinary  English  country  gentleman  could  hardly  have  been 
greater,  whether  in  points  01  appearance  or,  as  Robert  very  well 
knew,  in  points  of  social  conduct.  And  as  Robert  watchea  him, 
his  thoughts  flew  back  again  to  the  library,  to  this  man's  past,to 
all  that  those  eyes  had  seen  and  those  hands  had  touched.  He 
felt  already  a  mysterious,  almost  a  yearning,  sense  of  acquaint- 
ance with  the  being  who  had  just  received  him  with  such  chill- 
ing, such  unexpected,  indifference. 

The  squire's  manners,  no  doubt,  were  notorious,  but  even  so, 
his  reception  of  the  new  rector  of  the  parish,  the  son  of  a  man 
intimately  connected  for  years  with  the  place,  and  with  his 
father,  and  to  whom  he  had  himself  shown  what  was  for  him 
considerable  civility  by  letter  and  message,  was  sufficiently 
startling. 

Robert,  however,  had  no  time  to  speculate  on  the  causes  of 
it,  for  Mrs.  Darcy,  released  from  Mr.  Wynnstay,  threw  herself 
with  glee  on  to  her  longed-for  prey,  the  young  and  interesting- 
looking  rector.  First  of  all  she  cross-examined  him  as  to  his 
literary  employments,  and  when  by  dint  of  much  questioning 
she  had  forced  particulars  from  him,  Robert's  mouth  twitched 
as  he  watched  her  scuttling  away  from  the  subject,  seized 
evidently  with  internal  terrors  lest  she  should  have  precipi- 
tated herself  beyond  hope  of  rescue  into  the  jaws  of  the  sixth 
century.  Then  with  a  view  to  regaining  the  lead  and  opening 
another  and  more  promising  vein,  she  asked  him  his  opinion  of 
Lady  Selden's  last  novel,  Love  in  a  Marsh ;  and  when  he  con- 
fessed ignorance  she  paused  a  moment,  fork  in  hand,  her  small 
wrinkled  face  looking  almost  as  bewildered  as  when,  three 
minutes  before,  her  rashness  had  well-nigh  brought  her  face 
to  face  with  Gregory  of  Tours  as  a  topic  of  conversation. 

But  she  was  not  daunted  long.  With  little  airs  and  bridlings 
infinitely  diverting,  she  exchanged  inquiry  for  the  most  be- 
guiling confidence.  She  could  appreciate  '  clever  men,'  she  said, 
for  she — she  too^-was  literary.  Did  Mr.  Elsmere  know — this 
in  a  hurried  whisper,  with  sidelong  glances  to  see  that  Mr. 
Wynnstay  was  safely  occupied  with  Rose,  and  the  squire  with 
Lady  Charlotte — that  she  had  once  written  a  novel  ? 

Robert,  who  had  been  posted  up  in  many  things  concerning 
the  neighbourhood  by  Lady  Helen  Varley,  could  answer  most 
truly  that  he  had.  Whereupon  Mrs.  Darcy  beamed  all  over. 

'  Ah  !  but  you  haven't  read  it,'  she  said  regretfully.  '  It  was 
when  I  was  Maid  of  Honour,  you  know.  No  Maid  of  Honour 
had  ever  written  a  novel  before.  It  was  quite  an  event.  Dear 


230  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

Prince  Albert  borrowed  a  copy  of  me  one  night  to  read  in  bed — 
I  have  it  still,  with  the  page  turned  down  where  he  left  off.' 
She  hesitated.  '  It  was  only  in  the  second  chapter,'  she  said  at 
last  with  a  fine  truthfulness,  '  but  you  know  he  was  so  busy, 
all  the  Queen's  work  to  do,  of  course,  besides  his  own — poor 
man  ! ' 

Robert  implored  her  to  lend  him  the  work,  and  Mrs.  Darcy, 
with  blushes  which  made  her  more  weird  than  ever,  con- 
sented. 

Then  there  was  a  pause,  filled  by  an  acid  altercation  between 
Lady  Charlotte  and  her  husband,  who  had  not  found  Rose  as 
grateful  for  his  attentions  as,  in  his  opinion,  a  pink  and  white 
nobody  at  a  country  dinner-party  ought  to  be,  and  was  glad  of 
the  diversion  afforded  him  by  some  aggressive  remark  of  his 
wife.  He  and  she  differed  on  three  main  points — politics  •  the 
decoration  of  their  London  house,  Mr.  Wynnstay  being  a  lover 
of  Louis  Quinze,  and  Lady  Charlotte  a  preacher  of  Morris  ;  and 
the  composition  of  their  dinner-parties.  Lady  Charlotte,  in  the 
pursuit  of  amusement  and  notoriety,  was  fond  of  flooding  the 
domestic  hearth  with  all  the  people  possessed  of  any  sort  of  a 
name  for  any  sort  of  a  reason  in  London.  Mr.  Wynnstay 
loathed  such  promiscuity  ;  and  the  company  in  which  his  wife 
compelled  him  to  drink  his  wine  had  seriously  soured  a  small 
irritable  Conservative  with  more  family  pride  than  either  nerves 
or  digestion. 

During  the  whole  passage  of  arms,  Mrs.  Darcy  watched  Els- 
mere,  cat-and-mouse  fashion,  with  a  further  confidence  burning 
within  her,  and  as  soon  as  there  was  once  more  a  general  burst 
of  talk,  she  pounced  upon  him  afresh.  Would  he  like  to  know 
that  after  thirty  years  sne  had  just  finished  her  second  novel, 
unbeknown  to  her  brother — as  she  mentioned  him  the  little  face 
darkened,  took  a  strange  bitterness — and  it  was  just  about  to 
be  entrusted  to  the  post  and  a  publisher  1 

Robert  was  all  interest,  of  course,  and  inquired  the  subject. 
Mrs.  Darcy  expanded  still  more — could,  in  fact,  have  hugged 
him.  But,  just  as  she  was  launching  into  the  plot  a  thought, 
apparently  a  scruple  of  conscience,  struck  her. 

'  Do  you  remember,'  she  began,  looking  at  him  a  little  darkly, 
askance,  '  what  I  said  about  my  hobbies  the  other  day  ?  Now, 
Mr.  Elsmere,  will  you  tell  me — don't  mind  me — don't  be  polite 
— have  you  ever  heard  people  tell  stories  of  me  1  Have  you 
ever,  for  instance,  heard  them  call  me  a — a — tuft-hunter  ? ' 

'  Never  ! '  said  Robert  heartily. 

'  They  might,'  she  said,  sighing.  '  I  am  a  tuft-hunter.  I  can't 
help  it.  And  yet  we  are  a  good  family,  you  know.  I  suppose 
it  was  that  year  at  Court,  and  that  horrid  Warham  afterwards. 
Twenty  years  in  a  cathedral  town — and  a  very  little  cathedral 
town,  after  Windsor,  and  Buckingham  Palace,  and  dear  Lord 
Melbourne  !  Every  year  I  came  up  to  town  to  stay  with  my 
father  for  a  month  in  the  season,  and  if  it  hadn't  been  for  that 


CHAP,  xvn  SUKREY  231 

I  should  have  died — my  husband  knew  I  should.  It  was  the 
world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil,  of  course,  but  it  couldn't  be 
helped.  But  now,'  and  she  looked  plaintively  at  her  companion, 
as  though  challenging  him  to  a  candid  reply :  '  You  would  be 
more  interesting,  wouldn't  you,  to  tell  the  truth,  if  you  had  a 
handle  to  your  name  ? ' 

'Immeasurably,'  cried  Kobert,  stifling  his  laughter  with 
immense  difficulty,  as  he  saw  she  had  no  inclination  to  laugh. 

'  Well,  yes,  you  know.  But  it  isn't  right ; '  and  again  she 
sighed.  'And  so  I  have  been  writing  this  novel  just  for  that. 
It  is  called — what  do  you  think  ? — "  Mr.  Jones."  Mr.  Jones  is 
my  hero — it's  so  good  for  me,  you  know,  to  think  about  a  Mr. 
Jones.' 

She  looked  beamingly  at  him.  '  It  must  be  indeed  !  Have 
you  endowed  him  with  every  virtue  ? ' 

'  Oh  yes,  and  in  the  end,  you  know — '  and  she  bent  forward 
eagerly — 'it  all  comes  right.  His  father  didn't  die  in  Brazil 
without  children  after  all,  and  the  title ' 

'  What ! '  cried  Robert,  '  so  he  wasn't  Mr.  Jones  ? ' 

Mrs.  Darcy  looked  a  little  conscious. 

'Well,  no,'  she  said  guiltily,  'not  just  at  the  end.  But  it 
really  doesn't  matter — not  to  the  story.' 

Robert  shook  his  head,  with  a  look  of  protest  as  admonitory 
as  he  could  make  it,  which  evoked  in  her  an  answering  expres- 
sion of  anxiety.  But  just  at  that  moment  a  loud  wave  of  con- 
versation and  of  laughter  seemed  to  sweep  down  upon  them 
from  the  other  end  of  the  table,  and  their  little  private  eddy 
was  effaced.  The  squire  had  been  telling  an  anecdote,  and  his 
clerical  neighbours  had  been  laughing  at  it. 

'  Ah  ! '  cried  Mr.  Longstaffe,  throwing  himself  back  in  his 
chair  with  a  chuckle,  '  that  was  an  Archbishop  worth  having  ! ' 

'  A  curious  story,'  said  Mr.  Bickerton,  benevolently,  the  point 
of  it,  however,  to  tell  the  truth,  not  being  altogether  clear  to 
him.  It  seemed  to  Robert  that  the  squire  s  keen  eye.  as  he  sat 
looking  down  the  table,  with  his  large  nervous  hands  clasped 
before  him,  was  specially  fixed  upon  himself. 

'  May  we  hear  the  story  ? '  he  said,  bending  forward.  Catherine, 
faintly  smiling  in  her  corner  beside  the  host,  was  looking  a 
little  flushed  and  moved  out  of  her  ordinary  quiet. 

'It  is  a  story  of  Archbishop  Manners  Button,'  said  Mr. 
Wendover,  in. his  dry  nasal  voice.  'You  probably  know  it,  Mr. 
Elsmere.  After  Bishop  Heber's  consecration  to  the  See  of 
Calcutta,  it  fell  to  the  Archbishop  to  make  a  valedictory  speech, 
in  the  course  of  the  luncheon  at  Lambeth  which  followed  the 
ceremony.  "I  have  very  little  advice  to  give  you  as  to  your 
future  career,"  he  said  to  the  young  bishop,  "  but  all  that  ex- 
perience lias  given  me  I  hand  on  to  you.  Place  before  your 
eyes  two  precepts,  and  two  only.  One  is,  Preach  the  Gospel ; 
and  the  other  is — Put  doivn  enthusiasm  I " ' 

There  was  a  sudden  gleam  of  steely  animation  in  the  squire's 


232  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

look  as  he  told  his  story,  his  eye  all  the  while  fixed  on  Kobert. 
Robert  divined  in  a  moment  that  the  story  had  been  re-told  for 
his  special  benefit,  and  that  in  some  unexplained  way  the  rela- 
tions between  him  and  the  squire  were  already  biassed.  He 
smiled  a  little  with  faint  politeness,  and  falling  back  into  his 
place  made  no  comment  on  the  squire's  anecdote.  Lady 
Charlotte's  eyeglass,  having  adjusted  itself  for  a  moment  to  the 
distant  figure  of  the  rector,  with  regard  to  whom  she  had  been 
asking  Dr.  Meyrick  for  particulars,  quite  unmindful  of  Cath- 
erine's neighbourhood,  turned  back  again  towards  the  squire. 

'An  unblushing  old  worldling,  I  should  call  your  Archbishop,' 
she  said  briskly.  '  And  a  very  good  thing  for  him  that  he  lived 
when  he  did.  Our  modern  good  people  would  have  dusted  his 
apron  for  him.' 

Lady  Charlotte  prided  herself  on  these  vigorous  forms  of 
speech,  and  the  squire's  neighbourhood  generally  called  put  an 
unusual  crop  of  them.  The  squire  was  still  sitting  with  his 
hands  on  the  table,  his  great  brows  bent,  surveying  his  guests. 

'  Oh,  of  course  all  the  sensible  men  are  dead  ! '  he  said  indif- 
ferently. 'But  that  is  a  pet  saying  of  mine — the  Church  of 
England  in  a  nutshell.' 

Kobert  flushed,  and  after  a  moment's  hesitation  bent  forward. 

'  What  do  you  suppose,'  he  asked  quietly,  '  your  Archbishop 
meant,  Mr.  Wendover,  by  enthusiasm  ?  Nonconformity,  I 
imagine.' 

'  Oh,  very  possibly  ! '  and  again  Robert  found  the  hawk -like 
glance  concentrated  on  himself.  '  But  I  like  to  give  his  remark 
a  much  wider  extension.  One  may  make  it  a  maxim  of  general 
experience,  and  take  it  as  fitting  all  the  fools  with  a  mission 
who  have  teased  pur  generation — all  your  Kingsleys,  and 
Maurices,  and  Ruskins — every  one  bent  upon  making  any  sort 
of  aimless  commotion,  which  may  serve  him  both  as  an  invest- 
ment for  the  next  world,  and  an  advertisement  for  this.' 

'  Upon  my  word,  squire,'  said  Lady  Charlotte,  '  I  hope  you 
don't  expect  Mr.  Elsmere  to  agree  with  you  ? ' 

Mr.  Wendover  made  her  a  little  bow. 

'  I  have  very  little  sanguineness  of  any  sort  in  my  composition,' 
he  said  drily. 

'  I  should  like  to  know,'  said  Robert,  taking  no  notice  of  this 
by -play ;  '  I  should  like  to  know,  Mr.  Wendover,  leaving  the 
Archbishop  out  of  count,  what  you  understand  .by  this  word 
enthusiasm  in  this  maxim  of  yours  ? ' 

'  An  excellent  manner,'  thought  Lady  Charlotte,  who,  for  all 
her  noisiness,  was  an  extremely  shrewd  woman,  '  an  excellent 
manner  and  an  unprovoked  attack.' 

Catherine's  trained  eye,  however,  had  detected  signs  in 
Robert's  look  and  bearing  which  were  lost  on  Lady  Charlotte, 
and  which  made  her  look  nervously  on.  As  to  the  rest  of  the 
table,  they  had  all  fallen  to  watching  the  '  break '  between  the 
new  rector  and  their  host  with  a  good  deal  of  curiosity. 


CHAP,  xvn  SURREY  233 

The  squire  paused  a  moment  before  replying, — 

'  It  is  not  easy  to  put  it  tersely,'  he  said  at  last ;  c  but  I  may 
define  it,  perhaps,  as  the  mania  for  mending  the  roof  of  your 
right-hand  neighbour  with  straw  torn  off  the  roof  of  your  left- 
hand  neighbour ;  the  custom,  in  short,  of  robbing  Peter  to 
propitiate  Paul.' 

'Precisely,'  said  Mr.  Wynnstay  warmly;  'all  the  ridiculous 
Radical  nostrums  of  the  last  fifty  years — you  have  hit  them  off 
exactly.  Sometimes  you  rob  more  and  propitiate  less ;  some- 
times you  rob  less  and  propitiate  more.  But  the  principle  is 
always  the  same.'  And  mindful  of  all  those  intolerable  even- 
ings, when  these  same  Radical  nostrums  had  been  forced  down 
his  throat  at  his  own  table,  he  threw  a  pugnacious  look  at  his 
wife,  who  smiled  back  serenely  in  reply.  There  is  small  redress 
indeed  for  these  things,  when  out  of  the  common  household 
stock  the  wife  possesses  most  of  the  money,  and  a  vast  propor- 
tion of  the  brains. 

'  And  the  cynic  takes  pleasure  in  observing,'  interrupted  the 
squire,  '  that  the  man  who  effects  the  change  of  balance  does  it 
in  the  loftiest  manner,  and  profits  in  the  vulgarest  way.  Other 
trades  may  fail.  The  agitator  is  always  sure  of  his  market.' 

He  spoke  with  a  harsh  contemptuous  insistence  which  was 
gradually  setting  every  nerve  in  Robert's  body  tingling.  He 
bent  forward  again,  his  long  thin  frame  and  boyish  bright- 
complexioned  face  making  an  effective  contrast  to  the  squire's 
bronzed  and  wrinkled  squareness. 

'Oh,  if  you  and  Mr.  Wynnstay  are  prepared  to  draw  an 
indictment  against  your  generation  and  all  its  works,  I  have  no 
more  to  say,'  he  said,  smiling  still,  though  his  voice  had  risen  a 
little  in  spite  of  himself.  'I  should  be  content  to  withdraw 
with  my  Burke  into  the  majority.  I  imagined  your  attack  on 
enthusiasm  had  a  narrower  scope,  but  if  it  is  to  be  made 
synonymous  with  social  progress  I  give  up.  The  subject  is  too 
big.  Only ' 

He  hesitated.  Mr.  Wynnstay  was  studying  him  with  some- 
what insolent  coolness ;  Lady  Charlotte's  eyeglass  never 
wavered  from  his  face,  and  he  felt  through  every  fibre  the 
tender  timid  admonitions  of  his  wife's  eyes. 

'  However,'  he  went  on  after  an  instant,  '  I  imagine  that  we 
should  find  it  difficult  anyhow  to  discover  common  ground.  I 
regard  your  Archbishop's  maxim,  Mr.  Wendover,'  and  his  tone 
quickened  and  grew  louder,  '  as  first  of  all  a  contradiction  in 
terms  ;  and  in  the  next  place,  to  me,  almost  all  enthusiasms  are 
respectable ! ' 

'  You  are  one  of  those  people,  I  see,'  returned  Mr.  Wendover, 
after  a  pause,  with  the  same  nasal  emphasis  and  the  same 
hauteur,  '  who  imagine  we  owe  civilisation  to  the  heart '}  that 
mankind  \\Asfelt  its  way — literally.  The  school  of  the  majority, 
of  course — I  admit  it  amply.  I,  on  the  other  hand,  am  with  the 
benighted  minority  who  believe  that  the  world,  so  far  as  it  has 


234  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

lived  to  any  purpose,  has  lived  by  the  head,'  and  he  flung  the 
noun  at  Robert  scornfully.  '  But  I  am  quite  aware  that  in  a 
world  of  claptrap  the  philosopher  gets  all  the  kicks,  and  the 
philanthropists,  to  give  them  their  own  label,  all  the  halfpence.' 

The  impassive  tone  had  gradually  warmed  to  a  heat  which 
was  unmistakable.  Lady  Charlotte  looked  on  with  increasing 
relish.  To  her  all  society  was  a  comedy  played  for  her  enter- 
tainment, and  she  detected  something  more  dramatic  than  usual 
in  the  juxtaposition  of  these  two  men.  That  young  rector 
might  be  worth  looking  after.  The  dinners  in  Martin  Street 
were  alarmingly  in  want  of  fresh  blood.  As  for  poor  Mr. 
Bickerton,  he  had  begun  to  talk  hastily  to  Catherine,  with  a 
sense  of  something  tumbling  about  his  ears ;  while  Mr.  Long- 
staffe,  eyeglass  in  hand,  surveyed  the  table  with  a  distinct  sense 
of  pleasurable  entertainment.  He  had  not  seen  much  of  Elsmere 
yet,  but  it  was  as  clear  as  daylight  that  the  man  was  a  firebrand, 
and  should  be  kept  in  order. 

Meanwhile  there  was  a  pause  between  the  two  main  disput- 
ants ;  the  storm-clouds  were  deepening  outside,  and  rain  had 
begun  to  patter  on  the  windows.  Mrs.  Darcy  was  just  calling 
attention  to  the  weather  when  the  squire  unexpectedly  returned 
to  the  charge. 

'The  one  necessary  thing  in  life,'  he  said,  turning  to  Lady 
Charlotte,  a  slight  irritating  smile  playing  round  his  strong 
mouth,  '  is — not  to  be  duped.  Put  too  much  faith  in  these  fine 
things  the  altruists  talk  of,  and  you  arrive  one  day  at  the  con- 
dition of  Louis  XIV.  after  the  battle  of  Ramillies :  "  Dieu  a 
done  oubli£  tout  ce  que  j'ai  fait  pour  lui  ?"  Read  your  Renan  ; 
remind  yourself  at  every  turn  that  it  is  quite  possible  after  all 
the  egotist  may  turn  out  to  be  in  the  right  of  it,  and  you  will 
find  at  any  rate  that  the  world  gets  on  excellently  well  without 
your  blundering  efforts  to  set  it  straight.  And  so  we  get  back 
to  the  Archbishop's  maxim — adapted,  no  doubt,  to  English 
requirements,'  and  he  shrugged  his  great  shoulders  expressively : 
Pace  Mr.  Elsmere,  of  course,  and  the  rest  of  our  clerical 
friends ! ' 

Again  he  looked  down  the  table,  and  the  strident  voice 
sounded  harsher  than  ever  as  it  rose  above  the  sudden  noise 
of  the  storm  outside.  Robert's  bright  eyes  were  fixed  on  the 
squire,  and  before  Mr.  Wendover  stopped  Catherine  could  see 
the  words  of  reply  trembling  on  his  lips. 

'  I  am  well  content,'  he  said,  with  a  curious  dry  intensity  of 
tone.  '  I  give  you  your  Renan.  Only  leave  us  poor  dupes  our 
illusions.  We  will  not  quarrel  with  the  division.  With  you  all 
the  cynics  of  history  ;  with  us  all  the  "  scorners  of  the  ground  " 
from  the  world's  beginning  until  now  ! ' 

The  squire  make  a  quick  impatient  movement.  Mr.  Wynn- 
stay  looked  significantly  at  his  wife,  who  dropped  her  eye- 
glass with  a  little  irrepressible  smile. 

As  for   Robert,  leaning  forward  with  hastened  breath,   it 


CHAP,  xvin  SURREY  235 

seemed  to  him  that  his  eyes  and  the  squire's  crossed  like  swords. 
In  Robert's  mind  there  had  arisen  a  sudden  passion  of  an- 
tagonism. Before  his  eyes  there  was  a  vision  of  a  child  in  a 
stifling  room,  struggling  with  mortal  disease,  imposed  upon  her, 
as  he  hotly  reminded  himself,  by  this  man's  culpable  neglect. 
The  dinner-party,  the  splendour  of  the  room,  the  conversation, 
excited  a  kind  of  disgust  in  him.  If  it  were  not  for  Catherine's 
pale  face  opposite,  he  could  hardly  have  maintained  his  self- 
control. 

Mrs.  Darcy,  a  little  bewildered,  and  feeling  that  things  were 
not  going  particularly  well;  thought  it  best  to  interfere. 

'Roger,  she  said  plaintively,  'you  must  not  be  so  philoso- 
phical. It's  too  hot !  He  used  to  talk  like  that,'  she  went  on, 
bending  over  to  Mr.  Wynnstay,  'to  the  French  priests  who 
came  to  see  us  last  winter  in  Paris.  They  never  minded  a  bit — 
they  used  to  laugh.  "  Monsieur  votre  frere,  madame,  c'est  un 
homme  qui  a  trop  lu,"  they  would  say  to  me  when  I  gave  them 
their  coffee.  Oh,  they  were  such  dears,  those  old  priests  !  Roger 
said  they  had  great  hopes  of  me.' 

The  chatter  was  welcome,  the  conversation  broke  up.  The 
squire  turned  to  Lady  Charlotte,  and  Rose  to  Langham. 

'  Why  didn't  you  support  Robert  ? '  she  said  to  him,  impul- 
sively, with  a  dissatisfied  face.  'He  was  alone,  against  the 
table ! ' 

'  What  good  should  I  have  done  him  ? '  he  asked,  with  a  shrug. 
'  And  pray,  my  lady  confessor,  what  enthusiasms  do  you  suspect 
meof?' 

He  looked  at  her  intently.  It  seemed  to  her  they  were  by  the 
gate  again — the  touch  of  his  lips  on  her  hand.  She  turned  from 
him  hastily  to  stoop  for  her  fan  which  had  slipped  away.  It 
was  only  Catherine  who,  for  her  annoyance,  saw  the  scarlet  flush 
leap  into  the  fair  face.  An  instant  later  Mrs.  Darcy  had  given 
the  signal. 


CHAPTER   XVIH 

AFTER  dinner  Lady  Charlotte  fixed  herself  at  first  on  Catherine, 
whose  quiet  dignity  during  the  somewhat  trying  ordeal  of  the 
dinner  had  impressed  her,  but  a  few  minutes'  talk  produced  in 
her  the  conviction  that  without  a  good  deal  of  pains — and  why 
should  a  Londoner,  accustomed  to  the  cream  of  things,  take 
pains  with  a  country  clergyman's  wife  ? — she  was  not  likely  to 
get  much  out  of  her.  Her  appearance  promised  more,  Lady 
Charlotte  thought,  than  her  conversation  justified,  and  she 
looked  about  for  easier  game. 

'  Are  you  Mr.  Elsmere's  sister  1 '  said  a  loud  voice  over  Rose's 
head  ;  and  Rose,  who  had  been  turning  over  an  illustrated  book, 
with  a  mind  wholly  detached  from  it,  looked  up  to  see  Lady 
Charlotte's  massive  form  standing  over  her. 


236  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

'  No,  his  sister-in-law,'  said  Rose,  flushing  in  spite  of  herself, 
for  Lady  Charlotte  was  distinctly  formidable. 

'  Hum,'  said  her  questioner,  depositing  herself  beside  her.  '  I 
never  saw  two  sisters  more  unlike.  You  have  got  a  very  argu- 
mentative brother-in-law.' 

Rose  said  nothing,  partly  from  awkwardness,  partly  from 
rising  antagonism. 

'  Did  you  agree  with  him  1 '  asked  Lady  Charlotte,  putting  up 
her  glass  and  remorselessly  studying  every  detail  of  the  pink 
dress,  its  ornaments,  and  the  slippered  feet  peeping  out  beneath 
it. 

'  Entirely,'  said  Rose  fearlessly,  looking  her  full  in  the  face. 

'  And  what  can  you  know  about  it,  I  wonder  ?  However,  you 
are  on  the  right  side.  It  is  the  fashion  nowadays  to  have  en- 
thusiasms. I  suppose  you  muddle  about  among  the  poor  like 
other  people  ? ' 

'  I  know  nothing  about  the  poor,'  said  Rose. 

'Oh,  then,  I  suppose  you  feel  yourself  effective  enough  in 
some  other  line?'  said  the  other  coolly.  'What  is  it — lawn 
tennis,  or  private  theatricals,  or — hem — prettiness  t  And  again 
the  eyeglass  went  up. 

'  Whichever  you  like,'  said  Rose  calmly,  the  scarlet  on  her 
cheek  deepening,  while  she  resolutely  reopened  her  book.  The 
manner  of  the  other  had  quite  effaced  in  her  all  that  sense  of 
obligation,  as  from  the  young  to  the  old,  which  she  had  been 
very  carefully  brought  up  in.  Never  had  she  beheld  such  an 
extraordinary  woman. 

'Don't  read,'  said  Lady  Charlotte  complacently.  'Look  at 
me.  It's  your  duty  to  talk  to  me,  you  know  ;  and  I  won't  make 
myself  any  more  disagreeable  than  I  can  help.  I  generally 
make  myself  disagreeable,  and  yet,  after  all,  there  are  a  great 
many  people  who  like  me.' 

Rose  turned  a  countenance  rippling  with  suppressed  laughter 
on  her  companion.  Lady  Charlotte  had  a  large  fair  face,  with 
a  great  deal  of  nose  and  chin,  and  an  erection  of  lace  and 
feathers  on  her  head  that  seemed  in  excellent  keeping  with  the 
masterful  emphasis  of  those  features.  Her  eyes  stared  frankly 
and  unblushingly  at  the  world,  only  softened  at  intervals  by  the 
glasses  which  were  so  used  as  to  make  them  a  most  effective 
adjunct  of  her  conversation.  Sociallv,  she  was  absolutely  devoid 
of  weakness  or  of  shame.  She  found  society  extremely  interest- 
ing, and  she  always  struck  straight  for  the  desirable  things  in 
it,  making  short  work  of  all  those  delicate  tentative  processes 
of  acquaintanceship  by  which  men  and  women  ordinarily  sort 
themselves.  Rose's  brilliant  vivacious  beauty  had  caught  her 
eye  at  dinner  ;  she  adored  beauty  as  she  adored  anything  effec- 
tive, and  she  always  took  a  queer  pleasure  in  bullying  her  way 
into  a  girl's  liking.  It  is  a  great  thing  to  be  persuaded  that  at 
bottom  you  have  a  good  heart.  Lady  Charlotte  was  so  per- 
suaded, and  allowed  herself  many  things  in  consequence. 


CHAP,  xvin  SURREY  237 

'  What  shall  we  talk  about  ? '  said  Rose  demurely.  '  What  a 
magnificent  old  house  this  is  ! ' 

'  Stuff  and  nonsense  !  I  don't  want  to  talk  about  the  house. 
I  am  sick  to  death  of  it.  And  if  your  people  live  in  the  parish, 
you  are  too.  I  return  to  my  question.  Come,  tell  me,  what  is 
your  particular  line  in  life  ?  I  am  sure  you  have  one,  by  your 
face.  You  had  better  tell  me ;  it  will  do  you  no  harm. 

Lady  Charlotte  settled  herself  comfortably  on  the  sofa,  and 
Rose,  seeing  that  there  was  no  chance  of  escaping  her  tormentor, 
felt  her  spirits  rise  to  an  encounter. 

'  Really — Lady  Charlotte — '  and  she  looked  down,  and  then 
up,  with  a  feigned  bashfulness — '  I — I — play  a  little.' 

'  Humph  ! '  said  her  questioner  again,  rather  disconcerted  by 
the  obvious  missishness  of  the  answer.  '  You  do,  do  you  ? 
More's  the  pity.  No  woman  who  respects  herself  ought  to  play 
the  piano  nowadays.  A  professional  told  me  the  other  day  that 
until  nineteen-twentieths  of  the  profession  were  strung  up, 
there  would  be  no  chance  for  the  rest ;  and  as  for  amateurs, 
there  is  simply  no  room  for  them  whatever.  I  can't  conceive 
anything  more  passe  than  amateur  pianoforte  playing  ! ' 

'  I  don't  play  the  piano,'  said  Rose  meekly. 

'What — the  fashionable  instrument,  the  banjo?'  laughed 
Lady  Charlotte.  '  That  would  be  really  striking.' 

Rose  was  silent  again,  the  corners  of  her  mouth  twitch- 
ing. 

'Mrs.  Darcy,'  said  her  neighbour,  raising  her  voice,  'this 
young  lady  tells  me  she  plays  something  ;  what  is  it  ? ' 

Mrs.  Darcy  looked  in  a  rather  helpless  way  at  Catherine. 
She  was  dreadfully  afraid  of  Lady  Charlotte. 

Catherine,  with  a  curious  reluctance,  gave  the  required  infor- 
mation ;  and  then  Lady  Charlotte  insisted  that  the  violin  should 
be  sent  for,  as  it  had  not  been  brought. 

'  Who  accompanies  you  ? '  she  inquired  of  Rose. 

'  Mr.  Langham  plays  very  well,'  said  Rose  indifferently. 

Lady  Charlotte  raised  her  eyebrows.  'That  dark,  Byronic- 
looking  creature  who  came  with  you  ?  I  should  not  have  im- 
agined him  capable  of  anything  sociable.  Letitia,  shall  I  send 
my  maid  to  the  rectory,  or  can  you  spare  a  man  ? ' 

Mrs.  Darcy  hurriedly  gave  orders,  and  Rose,  inwardly  furious, 
was  obliged  to  submit.  Then  Lady  Charlotte,  having  gained 
her  point,  and  secured  a  certain  amount  of  diversion  for  the 
evening,  lay  back  on  the  sofa,  used  her  fan,  and  yawned  till  the 
gentlemen  appeared. 

When  they  came  in,  the  precious  violin  which  Rose  never 
trusted  to  any  other  hands  but  her  own  without  trepidation  had 
just  arrived,  and  its  owner,  more  erect  than  usual,  because  more 
nervous,  was  trying  to  prop  up  a  dilapidated  music-stand  which 
Mrs.  Darcy  had  unearthed  for  her.  As  Langham  came  in,  she 
looked  up  and  beckoned  to  him. 

'Do  you  see?'  she  said  to  him  impatiently,  'they  have  made 


238  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

me  play.  Will  you  accompany  me  ?  I  am  very  sorry,  but  there 
is  no  one  else.' 

If  there  was  one  thing  Langham  loathed  on  his  own  account, 
it  was  any  sort  of  performance  in  public.  But  the  half -plaintive 
look  which  accompanied  her  last  words  showed  that  she  knew 
it,  and  he  did  his  best  to  be  amiable. 

'  I  am  altogether  at  your  service,'  he  said,  sitting  down  with 
resignation. 

'  It  is  all  that  tiresome  woman,  Lady  Charlotte  Wynnstay,' 
she  whispered  to  him  behind  the  music-stand.  'I  never  saw 
such  a  person  in  my  life.' 

'Macaulay's  Lady  Holland  without  the  brains,'  suggested 
Langham  with  languid  vindictiveness  as  he  gave  her  the  note. 

Meanwhile  Mr.  Wynnstay  and  the  squire  sauntered  in  to- 
gether. 

'  A  village  Norman-Ne'ruda  ? '  whispered  the  guest  to  the  host. 
The  squire  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

'  Hush  ! '  said  Lady  Charlotte,  looking  severely  at  her  husband. 
Mr.  Wynnstay's  smile  instantly  disappeared ;  he  leant  against 
the  doorway  and  stared  sulkily  at  the  ceiling.  Then  the  musi- 
cians began,  on  some  Hungarian  melodies  put  together  by  a 
younger  rival  of  Brahms.  They  had  not  played  twenty  bars 
before  the  attention  of  every  one  in  the  room  was  more  or  less 
seized — unless  we  except  Mr.  Bickerton,  whose  children,  good 
soul,  were  all  down  with  some  infantile  ailment  or  other,  and 
who  was  employed  in  furtively  watching  the  clock  all  the  time 
to  see  when  it  would  be  decent  to  order  round  the  pony-carriage 
which  would  take  him  back  to  his  pale  overweighted  spouse. 

First  came  wild  snatches  of  march  music,  primitive,  savage, 
non-European ;  then  a  waltz  of  the  lightest,  maddest  rhythm, 
broken  here  and  there  by  strange  barbaric  clashes  ;  then  a  song, 
plaintive  and  clinging,  rich  in  the  subtlest  shades  and  melan- 
cholies of  modern  feeling. 

'  Ah,  but  excellent ! '  said  Lady  Charlotte  once,  under  her 
breath,  at  a  pause ;  '  and  what  entrain — what  beauty  ! ' 

For  Rose's  figure  was  standing  thrown  out  against  the  dusky 
blue  of  the  tapestried  walls,  and  from  that  delicate  relief  every 
curve,  every  grace,  each  tint — hair  and  cheek  and  gleaming  arm 
gained  an  enchanting  picture-like  distinctness.  There  was  jessa- 
mine at  her  waist  and  among  the  gold  of  her  hair  •  the  crystals 
on  her  neck,  and  on  the  little  shoe  thrown  forward  beyond  her 
dress,  caught  the  lamplight. 

'  How  can  that  man  play  with  her  and  not  fall  in  love  with 
her  1 '  thought  Lady  Charlotte  to  herself,  with  a  sigh,  perhaps, 
for  her  own  youth.  '  He  looks  cool  enough,  however ;  the  typical 
don  with  his  nose  in  the  air  ! ' 

Then  the  slow  passionate  sweetness  of  the  music  swept  her 
away  with  it,  she  being  in  her  way  a  connoisseur,  and  she  ceased 
to  speculate.  When  the  sounds  ceased  there  was  silence  for  a 
moment.  Mrs.  Darcy,  who  had  a  piano  in  her  sitting-room 


CHAF.  xvni  SURREY  239 

whereon  she  strummed  every  morning  with  her  tiny  rheumatic 
fingers,  and  who  had,  as  we  know,  strange  little  veins  of  senti- 
ment running  all  about  her,  stared  at  Rose  with  open  mouth. 
So  did  Catherine.  Perhaps  it  was  then  for  the  first  time  that, 
touched  by  this  publicity,  this  contagion  of  other  people's  feel- 
ing, Catherine  realised  fully  against  what  a  depth  of  stream  she 
had  been  building  her  useless  barriers. 

'  More  !  more  ! '  cried  Lady  Charlotte. 

The  whole  room  seconded  the  demand  save  the  squire  and 
Mr.  Bickerton.  They  withdrew  together  into  a  distant  oriel. 
Robert,  who  was  delighted  with  his  little  sister-in-law's  success, 
went  smiling  to  talk  of  it  to  Mrs.  Darcy,  while  Catherine  with 
a  gentle  coldness  answered  Mr.  Longstafie's  questions  on  the 
same  theme. 

'  Shall  we  1 '  said  Rose,  panting  a  little,  but  radiant,  looking 
down  on  her  companion. 

'  Command  me  ! '  he  said,  his  grave  lips  slightly  smiling,  his 
eyes  taking  in'.the  same  vision  that  had  charmed  Lady  Charlotte's. 
What  a  '  child  of  grace  and  genius  ! ' 

'  But  do  you  like  it  ? '  she  persisted. 

'  Like  it — like  accompanying  your  playing  ? ' 

'  Oh  no  ! ' — impatiently ;  '  snowing  off,  I  mean.  I  am  quite 
ready  to  stop.' 

'  Uo  on  ;  go  on  ! '  he  said,  laying  his  finger  on  the  A.  '  You 
have  driven  all  my  mauvaise  honte  away.  I  have  not  heard  you 
play  so  splendidly  yet.' 

She  flushed  all  over.     '  Then  we  will  go  on,'  she  said  briefly. 

So  they  plunged  again  into  an  Andante  and  Scherzo  of  Beeth- 
oven. How  the  girl  threw  herself  into  it,  bringing  out  the 
wailing  love-song  of  the  Andante,  the  dainty  tripping  mirth  of 
the  Scherzo,  in  a  way  which  set  every  nerve  in  Langham  vibrat- 
ing !  Yet  the  art  or  it  was  wholly  unconscious.  The  music  was 
the  mere  natural  voice  of  her  inmost  self.  A  comparison  full  of 
excitement  was  going  on  in  that  self  between  her  first  impres- 
sions of  the  man  beside  her,  and  her  consciousness  of  him,  as  he 
seemed  to-night,  human,  sympathetic,  kind.  A  blissful  sense  of 
a  mission  filled  the  young  silly  soul.  Like  David,  she  was 
pitting  herself  and  her  gilt  against  those  dark  powers  which 
may  invade  and  paralyse  a  life. 

After  the  shouts  of  applause  at  the  end  had  yielded  to  a  burst 
of  talk,  in  the  midst  of  which  Lady  Charlotte,  with  exquisite 
infelicity,  might  have  been  heard  laying  down  the  law  to  Cath- 
erine as  to  how  her  sister's  remarkable  musical  powers  might  be 
best  perfected,  Langham  turned  to  his  companion, — 

'  Do  you  know  that  for  years  I  have  enjoyed  nothing  so  much 
as  the  music  of  the  last  two  days  ? ' 

His  black  eyes  shone  upon  her,  transfused  with  something 
infinitely  soft  and  friendly.  She  smiled.  '  How  little  I  ima- 
gined that  first  evening  that  you  cared  for  music  ! ' 

4  Or  about  anything  else  worth  caring  for  ? '  he  asked  her, 


240  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

laughing,  but  with  always  that  little  melancholy  note  in  the 
laugh. 

'  Oh,  if  you  like,'  she  said,  with  a  shrug  of  her  white  shoulders. 
'  I  believe  you  talked  to  Catherine  the  whole  of  the  first  evening, 
when  you  weren't  reading  Hamlet  in  the  corner,  about  the 
arrangements  for  women's  education  at  Oxford.' 

'  Could  I  have  found  a  more  respectable  subject  ? '  he  inquired 
of  her. 

'The  adjective  is  excellent,'  she  said  with  a  little  face,  as  she 
put  her  violin  into  its  case.  '  If  I  remember  right,  Catherine 
and  I  felt  it  personal.  None  of  us  were  ever  educated,  except 
in  arithmetic,  sewing,  English  history,  the  Catechism,  and 
Paradise  Lost.  I  taught  myself  French  at  seventeen,  because 
one  Moliere  wrote  plays  in  it,  and  German  because  of  Wagner. 
But  they  are  my  French  and  my  German.  I  wouldn't  advise 
anybody  else  to  steal  them  ! ' 

Langham  was  silent,  watching  the  movements  of  the  girl's 
agile  fingers. 

'  I  wonder,'  he  said  at  last,  slowly,  '  when  I  shall  play  that 
Beethoven  again  ? ' 

'  To-morrow  morning  if  you  have  a  conscience,'  she  said  drily  ; 
'  WB  murdered  one  or  two  passages  in  fine  style.' 

He  looked  at  her,  startled.  'But  I  go  by  the  morning  train  ! ' 
There  was  an  instant's  silence.  Then  the  violin  case  shut  with 
a  snap. 

'  I  thought  it  was  to  be  Saturday,'  she  said  abruptly. 

'  No,'  he  answered  with  a  sigh, '  it  was  always  Friday.  There 
is  a  meeting  in  London  I  must  get  to  to-morrow  afternoon.' 

'  Then  we  shan't  finish  these  Hungarian  duets,'  she  said  slowly, 
turning  away  from  him  to  collect  some  music  on  the  piano. 

Suddenly  a  sense  of  the  difference  between  the  week  behind 
him,  with  all  its  ups  and  downs,  its  quarrels,  its  ennuis,  its 
moments  of  delightful  intimity,  of  artistic  freedom  and  pleasure, 
and  those  threadbare  monotonous  weeks  into  which  he  was  to 
slip  back  on  the  morrow,  awoke  in  him  a  mad  inconsequent 
sting  of  disgust,  of  self-pity. 

'  No,  we  shall  finish  nothing,'  he  said  in  a  voice  which  only  she 
could  hear,  his  hands  lying  on  the  keys  ;  '  there  are  some  whose 
destiny  it  is  never  to  finish — never  to  have  enough — to  leave  the 
feast  on  the  table,  and  all  the  edges  of  life  ragged  ! ' 

Her  lips  trembled.  They  were  far  away,  in  the  vast  room, 
from  the  group  Lady  Charlotte  was  lecturing.  Her  nerves  were 
all  unsteady  with  music  and  feeling,  and  the  face  looking  down 
on  him  had  grown  pale. 

'We  make  our  own  destiny,'  she  said  impatiently.  {  We 
choose.  It  is  all  our  own  doing.  Perhaps  destiny  begins  things 
— friendship,  for  instance ;  but  afterwards  it  is  absurd  to  talk 
of  anything  but  ourselves.  We  keep  our  friends,  our  chances, 
our — our  joys,'  she  went  on  hurriedly,  trying  desperately  to 
generalise,  '  or  we  throw  them  away  wilfully,  because  we  choose.' 


CHAP,  xvin  SURREY  241 

Their  eyes  were  riveted  on  each  other. 

'  Not  wilfully,'  he  said  under  his  breath.  '  But — no  matter. 
May  I  take  you  at  your  word,  Miss  Leyburn?  Wretched 
shirker  that  I  am,  whom  even  Robert's  charity  despairs  of : 
have  I  made  a  friend  ?  Can  I  keep  her  ? ' 

Extraordinary  spell  of  the  dark  effeminate  face — of  its  rare 
smile !  The  girl  forgot  all  pride,  all  discretion.  '  Try,'  she 
whispered,  and  as  his  hand,  stretching  along  the  keyboard,  in- 
stinctively felt  for  hers,  for  one  instant — and  another,  and 
another — she  gave  it  to  him. 

'Albert,  come  here  ! '  exclaimed  Lady  Charlotte,  beckoning  to 
her  husband ;  and  Albert,  though  with  a  bad  grace,  obeyed. 
'  Just  go  and  ask  that  girl  to  come  and  talk  to  me,  will  you  1 
Why  on  earth  didn't  you  make  friends  with  her  at  dinner  ? 

The  husband  made  some  irritable  answer,  and  the  wife 
laughed. 

'  Just  like  you  ! '  she  said,  with  a  good  humour  which  seemed 
to  him  solely  caused  by  the  fact  of  his  non-success  with  the 
beauty  at  table.  '  You  always  expect  to  kill  at  the  first  stroke. 
I  mean  to  take  her  in  tow.  Go  and  bring  her  here.' 

Mr.  Wynnstay  sauntered  off  with  as  much  dignity  as  his 
stature  was  capable  of.  He  found  Rose  tying  up  her  music  at 
one  end  of  the  piano,  while  Langham  was  preparing  to  shut  up 
the  keyboard. 

There  was  something  appeasing  in  the  girl's  handsomeness. 
Mr.  Wynnstay  laid  down  his  airs,  paid  her  various  compliments, 
and  led  her  off  to  Lady  Charlotte. 

Langham  stood  by  the  piano,  lost  in  a  kind  of  miserable 
dream.  Mrs.  Darcy  fluttered  up  to  him. 

'Oh,  Mr.  Langham,  you  play  so  beautifully/  Do  play  a 
solo ! ' 

He  subsided  on  to  the  music -bench  obediently.  On  any 
ordinary  occasion  tortures  could  not  have  induced  him  to  per- 
form in  a  room  full  of  strangers.  He  had  far  too  lively  and 
fastidious  a  sense  of  the  futility  of  the  amateur. 

But  he  played — what,  he  knew  not.  Nobody  listened  but 
Mrs.  Darcy,  who  sat  lost  in  an  armchair  a  little  way  off,  her  tiny 
foot  beating  time.  Rose  stopped  talking,  started,  tried  to  listen. 
But  Lady  Charlotte  had  had  enough  music,  and  so  had  Mr. 
Longstaffe,  who  was  endeavouring  to  joke  himself  into  the  good 
graces  of  the  Duke  of  Sedbergh's  sister.  The  din  of  conversa- 
tion rose  at  the  challenge  of  the  piano,  and  Langham  was  soon 
overcrowded. 

Musically,  it  was  perhaps  as  well,  for  the  player's  inward 
tumult  was  so  great,  that  what  his  hands  did  he  hardly  knew  or 
cared.  He  felt  himself  the  greatest  criminal  unhung.  Sud- 
denly, through  all  that  wilful  mist  of  epicurean  feeling  which 
had  been  enwrapping  him,  there  had  pierced  a  sharp  illumining 
beam  from  a  girl  s  eyes  aglow  with  joy,  with  hope,  with  tender- 

R 


242  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

ness.  In  the  name  of  Heaven,  what  had  this  growing  degeneracy 
of  every  moral  muscle  led  him  to  now  ?  What !  smile  and  talk, 
and  smile — and  be  a  villain  all  the  time  ?  What !  encroach  on 
a  young  life,  like  some  creeping  parasitic  growth,  taking  all, 
able  to  give  nothing  in  return — not  even  one  genuine  spark  of 
genuine  passion  ?  Go  philandering  on  till  a  child  of  nineteen  shows 
you  her  warm  impulsive  heart,  play  on  her  imagination,  on  her 
pity,  safe  all  the  while  in  the  reflection  that  by  the  next  day  you 
will  be  far  away,  and  her  task  and  yours  will  be  alike  to  forget ! 
He  shrinks  from  himself  as  one  shrinks  from  a  man  capable  of 
injuring  anything  weak  and  helpless.  To  despise  the  world's 
social  code,  and  then  to  fall  conspicuously  below  its  simplest 
articles ;  to  aim  at  being  pure  intelligence,  pure  open-eyed 
rationality,  and  not  even  to  succeed  in  being  a  gentleman,  as 
the  poor  commonplace  world  understands  it !  Oh,  to  fall  at  her 
feet,  and  ask  her  pardon  before  parting  for  ever  !  But  no — no 
more  posing  ;  no  more  dramatising.  How  can  he  get  away  most 
quietly — make  least  sign  ?  The  thought  of  that  walk  home  in 
the  darkness  fills  him  with  a  passion  of  irritable  impatience. 

'  Look  at  that  Romney,  Mr.  Elsmere ;  just  look  at  it ! '  cried  Dr. 
Meyrick  excitedly ;  '  did  you  ever  see  anything  finer  ?  There 
was  one  of  those  London  dealer  fellows  down  here  last  summer 
offered  the  squire  four  thousand  pounds  down  on  the  nail 
for  it.' 

In  this  way  Meyrick  had  been  taking  Robert  round  the  draw- 
ing-roorrij  doing  the  honours  of  every  stick  and  stone  in  it,  his 
eyeglass  in  his  eye,  his  thin  old  face  shining  with  pride  over  the 
Wendover  possessions.  And  so  the  two  gradually  neared  the 
oriel  where  the  squire  and  Mr.  Bickerton  were  standing. 

Robert  was  in  twenty  minds  as  to  any  further  conversation 
with  the  squire.  After  the  ladies  had  gone,  while  every  nerve  in 
him  was  still  tingling  with  anger,  he  had  done  his  best  to  keep  up 
indifferent  talk  on  local  matters  with  Mr.  Bickerton.  Inwardly 
he  was  asking  himself  whether  he  should  ever  sit  at  the  squire's 
table  and  eat  his  bread  again.  It  seemed  to  him  that  they  had 
had  a  brush  which  would  be  difficult  to  forget.  And  as  he  sat 
there  before  the  squire's  wine,  hot  with  righteous  heat,  all  his 
grievances  against  the  man  and  the  landlord  crowded  upon  him. 
A  fig  for  intellectual  eminence  if  it  make  a  man  oppress  his 
inferiors  and  bully  his  equals  ! 

But  as  the  minutes  passed  on,  the  rector  had  cooled  down. 
The  sweet,  placable,  scrupulous  nature  began  to  blame  itself. 
'What,  play  your  cards  so  badly,  give  up  the  game  so  rashly, 
the  very  first  round  ?  Nonsense !  Patience  and  try  again. 
There  must  be  some  cause  in  the  background.  No  need  to  be 
white-livered,  but  every  need,  in  the  case  of  such  a  man  as  the 
squire,  to  take  no  hasty  needless  offence.' 

So  he  had  cooled  and  cooled,  and  now  here  were  Meyrick  and 
he  close  to  the  squire  and  his  companion.  The  two  men,  as 


CHAP,  xvni  SURREY  243 

the  rector  approached,  were  discussing  some  cases  of  common 
enclosure  that  had  just  taken  place  in  the  neighbourhood. 
Robert  listened  a  moment,  then  struck  in.  Presently,  when 
the  chat  dropped,  he  began  to  express  to  the  squire  his  pleasure 
in  the  use  of  the  library.  His  manner  was  excellent,  courtesy 
itself,  but  without  any  trace  of  effusion. 

'  I  believe,'  he  said  at  last,  smiling,  '  my  father  used  to  be 
allowed  the  same  privileges.  If  so,  it  quite  accounts  for  the 
way  in  which  he  clung  to  Murewell.' 

'I  had  never  the  honour  of  Mr.  Edward  Elsmere's  acquaint- 
ance,' said  the  squire  frigidly.  '  During  the  time  of  his  occupa- 
tion of  the  rectory  I  was  not  in  England.' 

'  I  know.  Do  you  still  go  much  to  Germany  ?  Do  you  keep 
up  your  relations  with  Berlin  1 ' 

'I  have  not  seen  Berlin  for  fifteen  years,'  said  the  squire 
briefly,  his  eyes  in  their  wrinkled  sockets  fixed  sharply  on  the 
man  who  ventured  to  question  him  about  himself,  uninvited. 
There  was  an  awkward  pause.  Then  the  squire  turned  again 
to  Mr.  Bickerton. 

'  Bickerton,  have  you  noticed  how  many  trees  that  storm  of 
last  February  has  brought  down  at  the  north-east  corner  of  the 
park?' 

Robert  was  inexpressibly  galled  by  the  movement,  lay  the 
words  themselves.  The  squire  had  not  yet  addressed  a  single 
remark  of  any  kind  about  Murewell  to  him.  There  was  a  de- 
liberate intention  to  exclude  implied  in  this  appeal  to  the  man 
who  was  not  the  man  of  the  place,  on  such  a  local  point,  which 
struck  Robert  very  forcibly. 

He  walked  away  to  where  his  wife  was  sitting. 

'  What  time  is  it  ? '  whispered  Catherine,  looking  up  at  him. 

'Time  to  go,'  he  returned,  smiling,  but  she  caught  the  dis- 
composure in  his  tone  and  look  at  once,  and  her  wifely  heart 
rose  against  the  squire.  She  got  up,  drawing  herself  together 
with  a  gesture  that  became  her. 

'  Then  let  us  go  at  once,'  she  said.     '  Where  is  Rose  ? ' 

A  minute  later  there  was  a  general  leave-taking.  Oddly 
enough  it  found  the  squire  in  the  midst  of  a  conversation  with 
Langham.  As  though  to  show  more  clearly  that  it  was  the 
rector  personally  who  was  in  his  black  books,  Mr.  Wendover 
had  already  devoted  some  cold  attention  to  Catherine  both  at 
and  after  dinner,  and  he  had  no  sooner  routed  Robert  than  he 
moved  in  his  slouching  away  across  from  Mr.  Bickerton  to 
Langham.  And  now,  another  man  altogether,  he  was  talking 
and  laughing — describing  apparently  a  reception  at  the  French 
Academy — the  epigrams  flying,  the  harsh  face  all  lit  up,  the 
thin  bony  fingers  gesticulating  freely. 

The  husband  and  wife  exchanged  glances  as  they  stood  wait- 
ing, while  Lady  Charlotte,  in  her  loudest  voice,  was  command- 
ing Rose  to  come  and  see  her  in  London  any  Thursday  after  the 
first  of  November.  Robert  was  very  sore.  Catherine  passion- 


244  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

ately  felt  it,  and  forgetting  everything  but  him,  longed  to  be 
out  with  him  in  the  park  comforting  him. 

'  What  an  absurd  fuss  you  have  been  making  about  that  girl,' 
Wynnstay  exclaimed  to  his  wife  as  the  Elsmere  party  left  the 
room,  the  squire  conducting  Catherine  with  a  chill  politeness. 
'And  now,  I  suppose,  you  will  be  having  her  up  in  town,  and 
making  some  young  fellow  who  ought  to  know  better  fall  in 
love  with  her.  I  am  told  the  father  was  a  grammar-school 
headmaster.  Why  can't  you  leave  people  where  they  belong  1 ' 

'  I  have  already  pointed  out  to  you,'  Lady  Charlotte  observed 
calmly,  '  that  the  world  has  moved  on  since  you  were  launched 
into  it.  I  can't  keep  up  class-distinctions  to  please  you  ;  other- 
wise, no  doubt,  being  the  devoted  wife  I  am,  I  might  try.  How- 
ever, my  dear,  we  both  have  our  fancies.  You  collect  Sevres 
china  with  or  without  a  pedigree,'  and  she  coughed  drily ;  '  I 
collect  promising  young  women.  On  the  whole,  I  think  my 
hobby  is  more  beneficial  to  you  than  yours  is  profitable  to  me.' 

Mr.  Wynnstay  was  furious.  Only  a  week  before  he  had  been 
childishly,  shamefully  taken  in  by  a  Jew  curiosity-dealer  from 
Vienna,  to  his  wife's  huge  amusement.  If  looks  could  have 
crushed  her,  Lady  Charlotte  would  have  been  crushed.  But 
she  was  far  too  substantial  as  she  lay  back  in  her  chair,  one 
large  foot  crossed  over  the  other,  and,  as  her  husband  very  well 
knew,  the  better  man  of  the  two.  He  walked  away,  murmur- 
ing under  his  moustache  words  that  would  hardly  have  borne 
publicity,  while  Lady  Charlotte,  through  her  glasses,  made  a 
minute  study  of  a  little  French  portrait  hanging  some  two 
yards  from  her. 

Meanwhile  the  Elsmere  party  were  stepping  out  into  the 
warm  damp  of  the  night.  The  storm  had  died  away,  but  a  soft 
Scotch  mist  of  rain  filled  the  air.  Everything  was  dark,  save 
for  a  few  ghostly  glimmerings  through  the  trees  of  the  avenue  ; 
and  there  was  a  strong  sweet  smell  of  wet  earth  and  grass. 
Rose  had  drawn  the  hood  of  her  waterproof  over  her  head,  and 
her  face  gleamed  an  indistinct  whiteness  from  its  shelter.  Oh 
this  leaping  pulse — this  bright  glow  of  expectation  !  How  had 
she  made  this  stupid  blunder  about  his  going?  Oh,  it  was 
Catherine's  mistake,  of  course,  at  the  beginning.  But  what 
matter  ?  Here  they  were  in  the  dark,  side  by  side,  friends  now, 
friends  always.  Catherine  should  not  spoil  their  last  walk 
together.  She  felt  a  passionate  trust  that  he  would  not  allow  it. 

'  Wifie  ! '  exclaimed  Robert,  drawing  her  a  little  apart,  '  do 
you  know  it  has  just  occurred  to  me  that,  as  I  was  going  through 
the  park  this  afternoon  by  the  lower  footpath,  I  crossed  Hens- 
lowe  coming  away  from  the  house.  Of  course  this  is  what  has 
happened  !  He  has  told  his  story  first.  No  doubt  just  before 
I  met  him  he  had  been  giving  the  squire  a  full  and  particular 
account  —  a  la  Henslowe —  of  my  proceedings  since  I  came. 
Henslowe  lays  it  on  thick  —  paints  with  a  will.  The  squire 


CHAP,  xvin  SURREY  245 

receives  me  afterwards  as  the  meddlesome  pragmatical  priest 
he  understands  me  to  be ;  puts  his  foot  down  to  begin  with ; 
and,  hinc  illce  lacrymce.  It's  as  clear  as  daylight !  I  thought 
that  man  had  an  odd  twist  of  the  lip  as  he  passed  me.' 

'Then  a  disagreeable  evening  will  be  the  worst  of  it,'  said 
Catherine  proudly.  '  I  imagine,  Robert,  you  can  defend  yourself 
against  that  bad  man  ? ' 

'  He  has  got  the  start ;  he  has  no  scruples  ;  and  it  remains  to 
be  seen  whether  the  squire  has  a  heart  to  appeal  to,'  replied  the 
young  rector  with  sore  reflectiveness.  '  Oh,  Catherine,  have 
you  ever  thought,  wifie,  what  a  business  it  will  be  for  us  if  I 
can't  make  friends  with  that  man  ?  Here  we  are  at  his  gates — 
all  our  people  in  his  power ;  the  comfort,  at  any  rate,  of  our 
social  life  depending  on  him.  And  what  a  strange,  unmanage- 
able, inexplicable  being  ! ' 

Elsmere  sighed  aloud.  Like  all  quick  imaginative  natures 
he  was  easily  depressed,  and  the  squire's  sombre  figure  had  for 
the  moment  darkened  his  whole  horizon.  Catherine  laid  her 
cheek  against  his  arm  in  the  darkness,  consoling,  remonstrat- 
ing, every  other  thought  lost  in  her  sympathy  with  Robert's 
worries.  Langham  and  Rose  slipped  out  of  her  head ;  Elsmere's 
step  had  quickened,  as  it  always  did  when  he  was  excited,  and 
she  kept  up  without  thinking. 

When  Langham  found  the  others  had  shot  ahead  in  the  dark- 
ness, and  he  and  his  neighbour  were  tete-a-tete,  despair  seized 
him.  But  for  once  he  showed  a  sort  of  dreary  presence  of  mind. 
Suddenly,  while  the  girl  beside  him  was  floating  in  a  golden 
dream  of  feeling,  he  plunged  with  a  stiff  deliberation  born  of  his 
inner  conflict  into  a  discussion  of  the  German  system  of  musical 
training.  Rose,  startled,  made  some  vague  and  flippant  reply. 
Langham  pursued  the  matter.  He  had  some  information  about 
it,  it  appeared,  garnered  up  in  his  mind,  which  might  perhaps 
some  day  prove  useful  to  her.  A  St.  Anselm's  undergraduate, 
one  Dashwood,  an  old  pupil  of  his,  had  been  lately  at  Berlin 
for  six  months,  studying  at  the  Conservatorium.  Not  long  ago, 
being  anxious  to  become  a  schoolmaster,  he  had  written  to 
Langham  for  a  testimonial.  His  letter  had  contained  a 
full  account  of  his  musical  life.  Langham  proceeded  to 
recapitulate  it. 

His  careful  and  precise  report  of  hours,  fees,  masters,  and 
methods  lasted  till  they  reached  the  park  gate.  He  had  the 
smallest  powers  of  social  acting,  and^  his  r6le  was  dismally 
overdone.  The  girl  beside  him  could  not  know  that  he  was 
really  defending  her  from  himself.  His  cold  altered  manner 
merely  seemed  to  her  a  sudden  and  marked  withdrawal  of  his 
petition  for  her  friendship.  No  doubt  she  had  received  that 
petition  too  effusively  —  and  lie  wished  there  should  be  no 
mistake. 

What  a  young  smarting  soul  went  through  in  that  half-mile 
of  listening  is  better  guessed  than  analysed.  There  are  certain 


246  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  n 

moments  of  shame,  which  only  women  know,  and  which  seem 
to  sting  and  burn  out  of  youth  all  its  natural  sweet  self-love. 
A  woman  may  outlive  them,  but  never  forget  them.  If  she  pass 
through  one  at  nineteen  her  cheek  will  grow  hot  over  it  at 
seventy.  Her  companion's  measured  tone,  the  flow  of  deliberate 
speech  which  came  from  him,  the  nervous  aloofness  of  his 
attitude — every  detail  in  that  walk  seemed  to  Rose's  excited 
sense  an  insult. 

As  the  park  gate  swung  behind  them  she  felt  a  sick  longing 
for  Catherine's  shelter.  Then  all  the  pride  in  her  rushed  to  the 
rescue  and  held  that  swooning  dismay  at  the  heart  of  her  in 
check.  And  forthwith  she  capped  Langham's  minute  account 
of  the  scale-method  of  a  famous  Berlin  pianist  by  some  witty 
stories  of  the  latest  London  prodigy,  a  child- violinist,  incredibly 
gifted,  dirty,  and  greedy,  whom  she  had  made  friends  with  in 
town.  The  girl's  voice  rang  out  sharp  and  hard  under  the  trees. 
Where,  in  fortune's  name,  were  the  lights  of  the  rectory? 
Would  this  nightmare  never  come  to  an  end  ? 

At  the  rectory  gate  was  Catherine  waiting  for  them,  her 
whole  soul  one  repentant  alarm. 

'  Mr.  Langham,  Robert  has  gone  to  the  study ;  will  you  go  and 
smoke  with  him  ? ' 

'  By  all  means.    Good-night,  then,  Mrs.  Elsmere.' 

Catherine  gave  him  her  hand.  Rose  was  trying  hard  to  fit 
the  lock  of  the  gate  into  the  hasp,  and  had  no  hand  free. 
Besides,  he  did  not  approach  her. 

'  Good-night ! '  she  said  to  him  over  her  shoulder. 

'  Oh,  and  Mr.  Langham ! '  Catherine  called  after  him  as  he 
strode  away,  '  will  you  settle  with  Robert  about  the  carriage  1 ' 

He  turned,  made  a  sound  of  assent,  and  went  on. 

'When ? '  asked  Rose  lightly. 

'  For  the  nine  o'clock  train. 

'  There  should  be  a  law  against  interfering  with  people's 
breakfast  hour,'  said  Rose ;  '  though,  to  be  sure,  a  guest  may  as 
well  get  himself  gone  early  and  be  done  with  it.  How  you  and 
Robert  raced,  Cathie !  We  did  our  best  to  catch  you  up,  but 
the  pace  was  too  good.' 

Was  there  a  wild  taunt,  a  spice  of  malice  in  the  girl's  reckless 
voice  ?  Catherine  could  not  see  her  in  the  darkness,  but  the 
sister  felt  a  sudden  trouble  invade  her. 

'  Rose,  darling,  you  are  not  tired  ? ' 

'Oh  dear,  no!  Good -night,  sleep  well.  What  a  goose  Mrs. 
Darcy  is ! ' 

And,  barely  submitting  to  be  kissed,  Rose  ran  up  the  steps 
and  upstairs. 

Langham  and  Robert  smoked  till  midnight.  Langham  for 
the  first  time  gave  Elsmere  an  outline  of  his  plans  for  the 
future,  and  Robert,  filled  with  dismay  at  this  final  breach  with 
Oxford  and  human  society,  and  the  only  form  of  practical  life 
possible  to  such  a  man,  threw  himself  into  protests  more  and 


CHAP,  xvin    •  SURREY  247 

more  vigorous  and  affectionate.  Langham  listened  to  them  at 
first  with  sombre  silence,  then  with  an  impatience  which 
gradually  reduced  Robert  to  a  sore  puffing  at  his  pipe.  There 
was  a  long  space  during  which  they  sat  together,  the  ashes  of 
the  little  fire  Robert  had  made  dropping  on  the  hearth,  and  not 
a  word  on  either  side. 

At  last  Elsmere  could  not  bear  it,  and  when  midnight  struck 
he  sprang  up  with  an  impatient  shake  of  his  long  body,  and 
Langham  took  the  hint,  gave  him  a  cold  good-night,  and  went. 

As  the  door  shut  upon  him  Robert  dropped  back  into  his 
chair,  and  sat  on,  his  face  in  his  hands,  staring  dolefully  at  the 
fire.  It  seemed  to  him  the  world  was  going  crookedly.  A  day 
on  which  a  man  of  singularly  open  and  responsive  temper 
makes  a  new  enemy,  and  comes  nearer  than  ever  before  to 
losing  an  old  friend,  shows  very  blackly  to  him  in  the  calendar, 
and,  by  way  of  aggravation,  Robert  Elsmere  says  to  himself  at 
once  that  somehow  or  other  there  must  be  fault  of  his  own  in 
the  matter. 

Rose  ! — pshaw  !  Catherine  little  knows  what  stuff  that  cold 
intangible  soul  is  made  of. 

Meanwhile,  Langham  was  standing  heavily,  looking  out  into 
the  night.  The  different  elements  in  the  mountain  of  discomfort 
that  weighed  upon  him  were  so  many  that  the  weary  mind 
made  no  attempt  to  analyse  them.  He  had  a  sense  of  disgrace, 
of  having  stabbed  something  gentle  that  had  leant  upon  him, 
mingled  with  a  strong  intermittent  feeling  of  unutterable  relief. 
Perhaps  his  keenest  regret  was  that,  after  all,  it  had  not  been 
love  !  He  had  offered  himself  up  to  a  girl's  just  contempt,  but 
he  had  no  recompense  in  the  shape  of  a  great  addition  to 
knowledge,  to  experience.  Save  for  a  few  doubtful  moments 
at  the  beginning,  when  he  had  all  but  surprised  himself  in 
something  more  poignant,  what  he  had  been  conscious  of  had 
been  nothing  more  than  a  suave  and  delicate  charm  of  sentiment, 
a  subtle  surrender  to  one  exquisite  aesthetic  impression  after 
another.  And  these  things  in  other  relations  the  world  had 
yielded  him  before. 

'  Am  I  sane  ? '  he  muttered  to  himself.  '  Have  I  ever  been 
sane  ?  Probably  not.  The  disproportion  between  my  motives 
and  other  men's  is  too  great  to  be  normal.  Well,  at  least  I  am 
sane  enough  to  shut  myself  up.  Long  after  that  beautiful  child 
has  forgotten  she  ever  saw  me  I  shall  still  be  doing  penance  in 
the  desert.' 

He  threw  himself  down  beside  the  open  window  with  a  groan. 
An  hour  later  he  lifted  a  face  blanched  and  lined,  and  stretched 
out  his  hand  with  avidity  towards  a  book  on  the  table.  It  was 
an  obscure  and  difficult  Greek  text,  and  he  spent  the  greater 
part  of  the  night  over  it,  rekindling  in  himself  with  feverish 
haste  the  embers  of  his  one  lasting  passion. 

Meanwhile,  in  a  room  overhead,  another  last  scene  in  this 
most  futile  of  dramas  was  passing.  Rose,  when  she  came  in, 


248  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  11 

had  locked  the  door,  torn  off  her  dress  and  her  ornaments,  and 
flung  herself  on  the  edge  of  the  bed,  her  hands  on  her  knees, 
her  shoulders  drooping,  a  fierce  red  spot  on  either  cheek.  There 
for  an  indefinite  time  she  went  through  a  torture  of  self -scorn. 
The  incidents  of  the  week  passed  before  her  one  by  one — her 
sallies,  her  defiances,  her  impulsive  friendliness,  the  Man,  the 
happiness  of  the  last  two  days,  the  self-abandonment  of  this 
evening.  Oh,  intolerable — intolerable  ! 

And  all  to  end  with  the  intimation  that  she  had  been 
behaving  like  a  forward  child— had  gone  too  far  and  must  be 
admonished — made  to  feel  accordingly  !  The  poisoned  arrow 
pierced  deeper  and  deeper  into  the  girl's  shrinking  pride.  The 
very  foundations  of  self-respect  seemed  overthrown. 

Suddenly  her  eye  caught  a  dim  and  ghostly  reflection  of  her 
own  figure,  as  she  sat  with  locked  hands  on  the  edge  of  the  bed, 
in  a  long  glass  near,  the  only  one  of  the  kind  which  the  rectory 
household  possessed.  Rose  sprang  up,  snatched  at  the  candle, 
which  was  flickering  in  the  air  of  the  open  window,  and  stood 
erect  before  the  glass,  holding  the  candle  above  her  head. 

What  the  light  showed  her  was  a  slim  form  in  a  white 
dressing-gown,  that  fell  loosely  about  it ;  a  rounded  arm  up- 
stretched  ;  a  head,  still  crowned  with  its  jessamine  wreath,  from 
which  the  bright  hair  fell  heavily  over  shoulders  and  bosom ; 
eyes,  under  frowning  brows,  flashing  a  proud  challenge  at 
what  they  saw  ;  two  lips,  'indifferent  red,'  just  open  to  let  the 
quick  breath  come  through — all  thrown  into  the  wildest  chiaro- 
scuro by  the  wavering  candle  flame. 

Her  challenge  was  answered.  The  fault  was  not  there.  Her 
arm  dropped.  She  put  down  the  light. 

'I  am  handsome,  she  said  to  herself,  her  mouth  quivering 
childishly.  '  I  am.  I  may  say  it  to  myself.' 

Then,  standing  by  the  window,  she  stared  into  the  night. 
Her  room,  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  house  from  Langham's, 
looked  over  the  cornfields  and  the  distance.  The  stubbles 
gleamed  faintly ;  the  dark  woods,  the  clouds  teased  by  the 
rising  wind,  sent  a  moaning  voice  to  greet  her. 

'  I  hate  him  !  I  hate  him  ! '  she  cried  to  the  darkness,  clench- 
ing her  cold  little  hand. 

Then  presently  she  slipped  on  to  her  knees,  and  buried  her 
head  in  the  bed-clothes.  She  was  crying — angry  stifled  tears 
which  had  the  hot  impatience  of  youth  in  them.  It  all  seemed 
to  her  so  untoward.  This  was  not  the  man  she  had  dreamed 
of — the  unknown  of  her  inmost  heart.  He  had  been  young, 
ardent,  impetuous  like  herself.  Hand  in  hand,  eye  flashing 
into  eye,  pulse  answering  to  pulse,  they  would  have  flung  aside 
the  veil  hanging  over  lire  and  plundered  the  golden  mysteries 
behind  it. 

She  rebels ;  she  tries  to  see  the  cold  alien  nature  which  has 
laid  this  paralysing  spell  upon  her  as  it  is,  to  reason  herself 
back  to  peace — to  indifference.  The  poor  child  flies  from  her 


CHAP,  xvni  SURREY  249 

own  half -understood  trouble ;  will  none  of  it ;  murmurs  again 
wildly — 

'I  hate  him  !  I  hate  him  !  Cold-blooded — ungrateful — 
unkind  ! ' 

In  vain.  A  pair  of  melancholy  eyes  haunt,  enthral  her  in- 
most soul.  The  charm  of  the  denied,  the  inaccessible  is  on  her, 
womanlike. 

That  old  sense  of  capture,  of  helplessness,  as  of  some  lassoed 
struggling  creature,  descended  upon  her.  She  lay  sobbing 
there,  trying  to  recall  what  she  had  been  a  week  before ;  the 
whirl  of  her  London  visit,  the  ambitions  with  which  it  had 
filled  her ;  the  bewildering  many-coloured  lights  it  had  thrown 
upon  life,  the  intoxicating  sense  of  artistic  power.  In  vain. 

'  The  stream  will  not  flow,  and  the  hills  will  not  rise  ; 
And  the  colours  have  all  passed  away  from  her  eyes.' 

She  felt  herself  bereft,  despoiled.  And  yet  through  it  all,  as 
she  lay  weeping,  there  came  flooding  a  strange  contradictory 
sense  of  growth,  of  enrichment.  In  such  moments  of  pain  does 
a  woman  first  begin  to  live  ?  Ah  !  why  should  it  hurt  so — this 
long-awaited  birth  of  the  soul  ? 


BOOK  III 

THE    SQUIEE 


CHAPTER  XIX 

THE  evening  of  the  Murewell  Hall  dinner-party  proved  to  be  a 
date  of  some  importance  in  the  lives  of  two  or  three  persons. 
Rose  was  not  likely  to  forget  it ;  Langham  carried  about  with 
him  the  picture  of  the  great  drawing-room,  its  stately  light  and 
shade,  and  its  scattered  figures,  through  many  a  dismal  subse- 
quent hour  ;  and  to  Robert  it  was  the  beginning  of  a  period  of 
practical  difficulties  such  as  his  fortunate  youth  had  never  yet 
encountered. 

His  conjecture  had  hit  the  mark.  The  squire's  sentiments 
towards  him,  which  had  been  on  the  whole  friendly  enough, 
with  the  exception  of  a  slight  nuance  of  contempt  provoked  in 
Mr.  Wendover's  mind  by  all  forms  of  the  clerical  calling,  had 
been  completely  transformed  in  the  course  of  the  afternoon 
before  the  dinner-party,  and  transformed  by  the  report  of  his 
agent.  Henslowe,  who  knew  certain  sides  of  the  squire's  char- 
acter by  heart,  had  taken  Time  by  the  forelock.  For  fourteen 
Ssars  before  Robert  entered  the  parish  he  had  been  king  of  it. 
r.  Preston,  Robert's  predecessor,  had  never  given  him  a 
moment's  trouble.  The  agent  had  developed  a  habit  of  drink- 
ing, had  favoured  his  friends  and  spited  his  enemies,  and  had 
allowed  certain  distant  portions  of  the  estate  to  go  finely  to 
ruin,  quite  undisturbed  by  any  sentimental  meddling  of  the 
priestly  sort.  Then  the  old  rector  had  been  gathered  to  the 
majority,  and  this  long-legged  busybody  had  taken  his  place,  a 
man,  according  to  the  agent,  as  full  of  communistical  notions 
as  an  egg  is  full  of  meat,  and  always  ready  to  poke  his  nose 
into  other  people's  business.  And  as  all  men  like  mastery,  but 
especially  Scotchmen,  and  as  during  even  the  first  few  months 
of  the  new  rector's  tenure  of  office  it  became  tolerably  evident 
to  Henslowe  that  young  Elsmere  would  soon  become  the  ruling 
force  of  the  neighbourhood  unless  measures  were  taken  to  pre- 
vent it,  the  agent,  over  his  nocturnal  drams,  had  taken  sharp 
and  cunning  counsel  with  himself  concerning  the  young  man. 

The  state  of  Mile  End  had  been  originally  the  result  of  in- 
dolence and  caprice  on  his  part  rather  than  of  any  set  purpose 
of  neglect.  As  soon,  however,  as  it  was  brought  to  his  notice 
by  Elsmere,  who  did  it,  to  begin  with,  in  the  friendliest  way,  it 


254  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

became  a  point  of  honour  with  the  agent  to  let  the  place  go  to 
the  devil,  nay,  to  hurry  it  there.  For  some  time  notwithstand- 
ing, he  avoided  an  open  breach  with  the  rector.  He  met  Els- 
mere's  remonstrances  by  a  more  or  less  civil  show  of  argument, 
belied  every  now  and  then  by  the  sarcasm  of  his  coarse  blue 
eye,  and  so  far  the  two  men  had  kept  outwardly  on  terms. 
Elsmere  had  reason  to  know  that  on  one  or  two  occasions  of 
difficulty  in  the  parish  Henslowe  had  tried  to  do  him  a  mischief. 
The  attempts,  however,  had  not  greatly  succeeded,  and  their 
ill-success  had  probably  excited  in  Elsmere  a  confidence  of  ulti- 
mate victory  which  had  tended  to  keep  him  cool  in  the  presence 
of  Henslowe's  hostility.  But  Henslowe  had  been  all  along  merely 
waiting  for  the  squire.  He  had  served  the  owner  of  the  Mure- 
well  estate  for  fourteen  years,  and  if  he  did  not  know  that 
owner's  peculiarities  by  this  time,  might  he  obtain  certain 
warm  corners  in  the  next  life  to  which  he  was  fond  of  con- 
signing other  people  !  It  was  not  easy  to  cheat  the  squire  out 
of  money,  but  it  was  quite  easy  to  play  upon  his  ignorance  of 
the  details  of  English  land  management — ignorance  guaranteed 
by  the  learned  habits  of  a  lifetime — on  his  complete  lack  of 
popular  sympathy,  and  on  the  contempt  felt  by  the  disciple  of 
Bismarck  and  Mommsen  for  all  forms  of  altruistic  sentiment. 
The  squire  despised  priests.  He  hated  philanthropic  cants. 
Above  all  things  he  respected  his  own  leisure,  and  was  ab- 
normally, irritably  sensitive  as  to  any  possible  inroads  upon  it. 

All  these  things  Henslowe  knew,  and  all  these  things  he 
utilised.  He  saw  the  squire  within  forty -eight  hours  of  his 
arrival  at  Murewell.  His  fancy  picture  of  Robert  and  his  doings 
was  introduced  with  adroitness,  and  coloured  with  great  skill, 
and  he  left  the  squire  walking  up  and  down  his  library,  chafing 
alternately  at  the  monstrous  fate  which  had  planted  this  senti- 
mental agitator  at  his  gates,  and  at  the  memory  of  his  own 
misplaced  civilities  towards  the  intruder.  In  the  evening  those 
civilities  were  abundantly  avenged,  as  we  have  seen. 

Robert  was  much  perplexed  as  to  his  next  step.  His  heart 
was  very  sore.  The  condition  of  Mile  End — those  gaunt-eyed 
women  and  wasted  children,  all  the  sordid  details  of  their  un- 
just avoidable  suffering  weighed  upon  his  nerves  perpetually. 
But  he  was  conscious  that  this  state  of  feeling  was  one  of  ten- 
sion, perhaps  of  exaggeration,  and  though  it  was  impossible 
he  should  let  the  matter  alone,  he  was  anxious  to  do  nothing 
rashly. 

However,  two  days  after  the  dinner-party  he  met  Henslowe 
on  the  hill  leading  up  to  the  rectory.  Robert  would  have  passed 
the  man  with  a  stiffening  of  his  tall  figure  and  the  slightest 
possible  salutation.  But  the  agent,  just  returned  from  a  round 
wherein  the  bars  of  various  local  inns  had  played  a  conspicuous 
part,  was  in  a  truculent  mood  and  stopped  to  speak.  He  took 
up  the  line  of  insolent  condolence  with  the  rector  on  the  impos- 
sibility of  carrying  his  wishes  with  regard  to  Mile  End  into 


CHAP,  xix  THE  SQUIRE  255 

effect.  They  had  been  laid  before  the  squire,  of  course,  but 
the  squire  had  his  own  ideas  and  wasn't  just  easy  to  manage. 

'Seen  him  yet,  sir  ?'  Henslowe  wound  up  jauntily,  every  line 
of  his  flushed  countenance,  the  full  lips  under  the  fair  beard, 
and  the  light  prominent  eyes,  expressing  a  triumph  he  hardly 
cared  to  conceal. 

'  I  have  seen  him,  but  I  have  not  talked  to  him  on  this  par- 
ticular matter,'  said  the  rector  quietly,  though  the  red  mounted 
in  his  cheek.  '  You  may,  however,  be  very  sure,  Mr.  Henslowe, 
that  everything  I  know  about  Mile  End  the  squire  shall  know 
before  long.' 

'  Oh,  lor'  bless  me,  sir  ! '  cried  Henslowe  with  a  guffaw,  '  it's 
all  one  to  me.  And  if  the  squire  ain't  satisfied  with  the  way 
his  work's  done  now,  why  he  can  take  you  on  as  a  second  string, 
you  know.  You'd  show  us  all,  I'll  be  bound,  how  to  make  the 
money  fly.' 

Then  Eobert's  temper  gave  way,  and  he  turned  upon  the 
half -drunk  en  brute  before  him  with  a  few  home-truths  delivered 
with  a  rapier-like  force  which  for  the  moment  staggered  Hens- 
lowe, who  turned  from  red  to  purple.  The  rector,  with  some  of 
those  pitiful  memories  of  the  hamlet,  of  which  we  had  glimpses 
in  his  talk  with  Langham,  burning  at  his  heart,  felt  the  man 
no  better  than  a  murderer,  and  as  good  as  told  him  so.  Then, 
without  giving  him  time  to  reply,  Kobert  strode  on,  leaving 
Henslowe  planted  in  the  pathway.  But  he  was  hardly  up  the 
hill  before  the  agent,  having  recovered  himself  by  dint  of 
copious  expletives,  was  looking  after  him  with  a  grim  chuckle. 
He  knew  his  master,  and  he  knew  himself,  and  he  thought 
between  them  they  would  about  manage  to  keep  that  young 
spark  in  order. 

Robert  meanwhile  went  straight  home  into  his  study,  and 
there  fell  upon  ink  and  paper.  What  was  the  good  of  protract- 
ing the  matter  any  longer?  Something  must  and  should  be 
done  for  these  people,  if  not  one  way,  then  another. 

So  he  wrote  to  the  squire,  showing  the  letter  to  Catherine 
when  it  was  done,  lest  there  should  be  anything  over-fierce  in 
it.  It  was  the  simple  record  of  twelve  months'  experience  told 
with  dignity  and  strong  feeling.  Henslowe  was  barely  men- 
tioned in  it,  and  the  chief  burden  of  the  letter  was  to  implore 
the  squire  to  come  and  inspect  certain  portions  of  his  property 
with  his  own  eyes.  The  rector  would  be  at  his  service  any  day 
or  hour. 

Husband  and  wife  went  anxiously  through  the  document, 
softening  here,  improving  there,  and  then  it  was  sent  to  the 
Hall.  Robert  waited  nervously  through  the  day  for  an  answer. 
In  the  evening,  while  he  and  Catherine  were  in  the  footpath 
after  dinner,  watching  a  chilly  autumnal  moonrise  over  the 
stubbles  of  the  cornfield,  the  answer  came. 

'  H'm,'  said  Robert  dubiously  as  he  opened  it,  holding  it  up 
to  the  moonlight ;  '  can't  be  said  to  be  lengthy.' 


256  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

He  and  Catherine  hurried  into  the  house.  Robert  read  the 
letter,  and  handed  it  to  her  without  a  word. 

After  some  curt  references  to  one  or  two  miscellaneous  points 
raised  in  the  latter  part  of  the  rector's  letter,  the  squire  wound 
up  as  follows  : — 

'  As  for  the  bulk  of  your  communication,  I  am  at  a  loss  to 
understand  the  vehemence  of  your  remarks  on  the  subject  of 
my  Mile  End  property.  My  agent  informed  me  shortly  after 
my  return  home  that  you  had  been  concerning  yourself  greatly, 
and,  as  he  conceived,  unnecessarily  about  the  matter.  Allow 
me  to  assure  you  that  I  have  full  confidence  in  Mr.  Henslowe, 
who  has  been  in  the  district  for  as  many  years  as  you  have 
spent  months  in  it,  and  whose  authority  on  points  connected 
with  the  business  management  of  my  estate  naturally  carries 
more  weight  with  me,  if  you  will  permit  me  to  say  so,  than 
your  own. — I  am,  sir,  your  obedient  servant, 

'  ROGER  WENDOVER.' 

Catherine  returned  the  letter  to  her  husband  with  a  look  of 
dismay.  He  was  standing  with  his  back  to  the  chimney-piece, 
his  hands  thrust  far  into  his  pockets,  his  upper  lip  quivering. 
In  his  happy  expansive  life  this  was  the  sharpest  personal  re- 
buff that  had  ever  happened  to  him.  He  could  not  but  smart 
under  it. 

'  Not  a  word,'  he  said,  tossing  his  hair  back  impetuously,  as 
Catherine  stood  opposite  watching  him — '  not  one  single  word 
about  the  miserable  people  themselves  !  What  kind  of  stuff  can 
the  man  be  made  off?' 

'  Does  he  believe  you  ? '  asked  Catherine,  bewildered. 

'  If  not,  one  must  try  and  make  him,'  he  said  energetically, 
after  a  moment's  pause.  '  To-morrow,  Catherine,  I  go  down  to 
the  Hall  and  see  him.' 

She  quietly  acquiesced,  and  the  following  afternoon,  first 
thing  after  luncheon,  she  watched  him  go,  her  tender  inspiring 
look  dwelling  with  him  as  he  crossed  the  park,  which  was  lying 
delicately  wrapped  in  one  of  the  whitest  of  autumnal  mists,  the 
sun  just  playing  through  it  with  pale  invading  shafts. 

The  butler  looked  at  him  with  some  doubtfulness.  It  was 
never  safe  to  admit  visitors  for  the  squire  without  orders. 
But  he  and  Robert  had  special  relations.  As  the  possessor  of  a 
bass  voice  worthy  of  his  girth,  Vincent,  under  Robert's  rule, 
had  become  the  pillar  of  the  choir,  and  it  was  not  easy  for  him 
to  refuse  the  rector. 

So  Robert  was  led  in,  through  the  hall,  and  down  the  long 
passage  to  the  curtained  door,  which  he  knew  so  well. 

'  Mr.  Elsmere,  sir  ! ' 

There  was  a  sudden  hasty  movement.  Robert  passed  a  mag- 
nificent lacquered  screen  newly  placed  round  the  door,  and 
found  himself  in  the  squire's  presence. 


OHAP.  xix  THE  SQUIRE  257 

The  squire  had  half  risen  from  his  seat  in  a  capacious  chair, 
with  a  litter  of  books  round  it,  and  confronted  his  visitor  with 
a  look  of  surprised  annoyance.  The  figure  of  the  rector,  tall, 
thin,  and  youthful,  stood  out  against  the  delicate  browns  and 
whites  of  the  book-lined  walls.  The  great  room,  so  impressively 
bare  when  Robert  and  Langham  had  last  seen  it,  was  now  full 
of  the  signs  of  a  busy  man's  constant  habitation.  An  odour  of 
smoke  pervaded  it ;  the  table  in  the  window  was  piled  with 
books  just  unpacked,  and  the  half -emptied  case  from  which 
they  had  been  taken  lay  on  the  ground  beside  the  squire's 
chair. 

'I  persuaded  Vincent  to  admit  me,  Mr.  Wendover,'  said 
Robert,  advancing  hat  in  hand,  while  the  squire  hastily  put 
down  the  German  professor's  pipe  he  had  just  been  enjoying, 
and  coldly  accepted  his  proffered  greeting.  '  I  should  have  pre- 
ferred not  to  disturb  you  without  an  appointment,  but  after 
your  letter  it  seemed  to  me  some  prompt  personal  explanation 
was  necessary.' 

The  squire  stiffly  motioned  towards  a  chair,  which  Robert 
took,  and  then  slipped  back  into  his  own,  his  wrinkled  eyes 
fixed  on  the  intruder. 

Robert,  conscious  of  almost  intolerable  embarrassment,  but 
maintaining  in  spite  of  it  an  excellent  degree  of  self-control, 
plunged  at  once  into  business.  He  took  the  letter  he  had  just 
received  from  the  squire  as  a  text,  made  a  good-humoured 
defence  of  his  own  proceedings,  described  his  attempt  to  move 
Henslowe,  and  the  reluctance  of  his  appeal  from  the  man  to 
the  master.  The  few  things  he  allowed  himself  to  say  about 
Henslowe  were  in  perfect  temper,  though  by  no  means  without 
an  edge. 

Then,  having  disposed  of  the  more  personal  aspects  of  the 
matter,  he  paused,  and  looked  hesitatingly  at  the  face  opposite 
him,  more  like  a  bronzed  mask  at  this  moment  than  a  human 
countenance.  The  squire,  however,  gave  him  no  help.  He  had 
received  his  remarks  so  far  in  perfect  silence,  and  seeing  that 
there  were  more  to  come,  he  waited  for  them  with  the  same 
rigidity  of  look  and  attitude. 

So,  after  a  moment  or  two,  Robert  went,  on  to  describe  in 
detail  some  of  those  individual  cases  of  hardship  and  disease  at 
Mile  End,  during  the  preceding  year,  which  could  be  most 
clearly  laid  to  the  sanitary  condition  of  the  place.  Filth,  damp, 
leaking  roofs,  foul  floors,  poisoned  water — he  traced  to  each 
some  ghastly  human  ill,  telling  his  stories  with  a  nervous 
brevity,  a  suppressed  fire,  which  would  have  burnt  them  into 
the  sense  of  almost  any  other  listener.  Not  one  of  these  woes 
but  he  and  Catherine  had  tended  with  sickening  pity  and  labour 
of  body  and  mind.  That  side  of  it  he  kept  rigidly  out  of  sight. 
But  all  that  he  could  hurl  against  the  squire's  feeling,  as  it 
were,  he  gathered  up,  strangely  conscious  through  it  all  of  his 
own  young  persistent  yearning  to  right  himself  with  this  man, 

3 


258  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  m 

whose  mental  history,  as  it  lay  chronicled  in  these  rooms,  had 
been  to  him,  at  a  time  of  intellectual  hunger,  so  stimulating,  so 
enriching. 

But  passion  and  reticence  and  hidden  sympathy  were  alike 
lost  upon  the  squire.  Before  he  paused  Mr.  Wendover  had 
already  risen  restlessly  from  his  chair,  and  from  the  rug  was 
glowering  down  on  his  unwelcome  visitor. 

Good  heavens  !  had  he  come  home  to  be  lectui^ed  in  his  own 
library  by  this  fanatical  slip  of  a  parson  ?  As  for  his  stories, 
the  squire  barely  took  the  trouble  to  listen  to  them. 

Every  popularity-hunting  fool,  with  a  passion  for  putting 
his  hand  into  other  people's  pockets,  can  tell  pathetic  stories ; 
but  it  was  intolerable  that  his  scholar  s  privacy  should  be  at  the 
mercy  of  one  of  the  tribe. 

'  Mr.  Elsmere,'  he  broke  out  at  last  with  contemptuous  em- 
phasis, '  I  imagine  it  would  have  been  better — infinitely  better 
— to  have  spared  both  yourself  and  me  the  disagreeables  of  this 
interview.  However,  I  am  not  sorry  we  should  understand 
each  other.  I  have  lived  a  life  which  is  at  least  double  the 
length  of  yours  in  very  tolerable  peace  and  comfort.  The  world 
lias  been  good  enough  for  me,  and  I  for  it,  so  far.  I  have  been 
master  in  my  own  estate,  and  intend  to  remain  so.  As  for  the 
new-fangled  ideas  of  a  landowner's  duty,  with  which  your  mind 
seems  to  be  full' — the  scornful  irritation  of  the  tone  was  unmis- 
takable— 'I  have  never  dabbled  in  them,  nor  do  I  intend  to 
begin  now.  I  am  like  the  rest  of  my  kind ;  I  have  no  money 
to  chuck  away  in  building  schemes,  in  order  that  the  rector  of 
the  parish  may  pose  as  the  apostle  of  the  agricultural  labourer. 
That,  however,  is  neither  here  nor  there.  What  is  to  the  pur- 
pose is,  that  my  business  affairs  are  in  the  hands  of  a  business 
man,  deliberately  chosen  and  approved  by  me,  and  that  I  have 
nothing  to  do  with  them.  Nothing  at  all ! '  he  repeated  with 
emphasis.  '  It  may  seem  to  you  very  shocking.  You  may  re- 
gard it  as  the  object  in  life  of  the  English  landowner  to  inspect 
the  pigstyes  and  amend  the  habits  of  the  English  labourer.  I 
don't  quarrel  with  the  conception,  I  only  ask  you  not  to  expect 
me  to  live  up  to  it.  I  am  a  student  first  and  foremost,  and 
desire  to  be  left  to  my  books.  Mr.  Henslowe  is  there  on  pur- 
pose to  protect  my  literary  freedom.  What  he  thinks  desirable 
is  good  enough  for  me,  as  I  have  already  informed  you.  I  am 
sorry  for  it  if  his  methods  do  not  commend  themselves  to  you. 
But  I  have  yet  to  learn  that  the  rector  of  the  parish  has  an  ex- 
officio  right  to  interfere  between  a  landlord  and  his  tenants.' 

Robert  kept  his  temper  with  some  difficulty.  After  a  pause 
he  said,  feeling  desperately,  however,  that  the  suggestion  was 
not  likely  to  improve  matters, — 

'  If  I  were  to  take  all  the  trouble  and  all  the  expense  off  your 
hands,  Mr.  Wendover,  would  it  be  impossible  for  you  to  authorise 
me  to  make  one  or  two  alterations  most  urgently  necessary  for 
the  improvement  of  the  Mile  End  cottages  ?' 


CHAP,  xix  THE  SQUIRE  259 

The  squire  burst  into  an  angry  laugh. 

'  I  have  never  yet  been  in  the  habit,  Mr.  Elsmere,  of  doing 
my  repairs  by  public  subscription.  You  ask  a  little  too  much 
from  an  old  man's  powers  of  adaptation.' 

Robert  rose  from  his  seat,  his  hand  trembling  as  it  rested  on 
his  walking-stick. 

'Mr.  Wendover,'  he  said,  speaking  at  last  with  a  flash  of 
answering  scorn  in  his  young  vibrating  voice,  'what  I  think 
you  cannot  understand  is  that  at  any  moment  a  human  creature 
may  sicken  and  die,  poisoned  by  the  state  of  your  property,  for 
which  you — and  nobody  else — are  ultimately  responsible.' 

The  squire  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

'  So  you  say,  Mr.  Elsmere.  If  true,  every  person  in  such  a 
condition  has  a  remedy  in  his  own  hands.  1  force  no  one  to 
remain  on  my  property.' 

'  The  people  who  live  there,'  exclaimed  Robert,  '  have  neither 
home  nor  subsistence  if  they  are  driven  out.  Murewell  is  full 
— times  bad — most  of  the  people  old.' 

'And  eviction  "a  sentence  of  death,"  I  suppose,'  interrupted 
the  squire,  studying  him  with  sarcastic  eyes.  '  Well,  I  have  no 
belief  in  a  Gladstonian  Ireland,  still  less  in  a  Radical  England. 
Supply  and  demand,  cause  and  effect,  are  enough  for  me.  The 
Mile  End  cottages  are  out  of  repair,  Mr.  Elsmere,  so  Mr.  Hens- 
lowe  tells  me,  because  the  site  is  unsuitable,  the  type  of  cottage 
out  of  date.  People  live  in  them  at  their  peril ;  I  don't  pull 
them  down,  or  rather' — correcting  himself  with  exasperating 
consistency — 'Mr.  Henslowe  doesn't  pull  them  down,  because, 
like  other  men,  I  suppose,  he  dislikes  an  outcry.  But  if  the 
population  stays,  it  stays  at  its  own  risk.  Now  have  I  made 
myself  plain  ? ' 

The  two  men  eyed  one  another. 

'Perfectly  plain,'  said  Robert  quietly.  'Allow  me  to  remind 
you,  Mr.  Wendover,  that  there  are  other  matters  than  eviction 
capable  of  provoking  an  outcry.' 

'As  you  please,'  said  the  other  indifferently.  'I  have  no 
doubt  I  shall  find  myself  in  the  newspapers  before  long.  If  so, 
I  daresay  I  shall  manage  to  put  up  with  it.  Society  is  made 
up  of  fanatics  and  the  creatures  they  hunt.  If  I  am  to  be 
hunted,  I  shall  be  in  good  company.' 

Robert  stood  hat  in  hand,  tormented  with  a  dozen  cross- 
currents of  feeling.  He  was  forcibly  struck  with  the  blind  and 
comparatively  motiveless  pugnacity  of  the  squire's  conduct. 
There  was  an  extravagance  in  it  which  for  the  first  time  recalled 
to  him  old  Meyrick's  lucubrations. 

'  I  have  done  no  good,  I  see,  Mr.  Wendover,'  he  said  at  last, 
slowly.  '  I  wish  I  could  have  induced  you  to  do  an  act  of  justice 
and  mercy.  I  wish  I  could  have  made  you  think  more  kindly 
of  myself.  I  have  failed  in  both.  It  is  useless  to  keep  you  any 
longer.  Good-morning.' 

He  bowed.     The  squire  also  bent  forward.     At  that  moment 


260  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

Robert  caught  sight  beside  his  shoulder  of  an  antique,  standing 
on  the  mantelpiece,  which  was  a  new  addition  to  the  room.  It 
was  a  head  of  Medusa,  and  the  frightful  stony  calm  of  it  struck 
on  Elsmere's  ruffled  nerves  with  extraordinary  force.  It  flashed 
across  him  that  here  was  an  apt  symbol  of  that  absorbing  and 
overgrown  life  of  the  intellect  which  blights  the  heart  and  chills 
the  senses.  And  to  that  spiritual  Medusa,  the  man  before  him 
was  not  the  first  victim  he  had  known. 

Possessed  with  the  fancy  the  young  man  made  his  way  into 
the  hall.  Arrived  there,  he  looked  round  with  a  kind  of  passion- 
ate regret :  '  Shall  I  ever  see  this  again  1 '  he  asked  himself. 
During  the  past  twelve  months  his  pleasure  in  the  great  house 
had  been  much  more  than  sensuous.  Within  those  walls  his 
mind  had  grown,  had  reached  to  a  fuller  stature  than  before, 
and  a  man  loves,  or  should  love,  all  that  is  associated  with  the 
maturing  of  his  best  self. 

He  closed  the  ponderous  doors  behind  him  sadly.  The  mag- 
nificent pile,  grander  than  ever  in  the  sunny  autumnal  mist 
which  enwrapped  it,  seemed  to  look  after  him  as  he  walked 
away,  mutely  wondering  that  he  should  have  allowed  anything 
so  trivial  as  a  peasant's  grievance  to  come  between  him  and  its 
perfections. 

In  the  wooded  lane  outside  the  rectory  gate  he  overtook 
Catherine.  He  gave  her  his  report,  and  they  walked  on  together 
arm-in-arm,  a  very  depressed  pair. 

'  What  shall  you  do  next  ? '  she  asked  him. 

'  Make  out  the  law  of  the  matter,'  he  said  briefly. 

'  If  you  get  over  the  inspector,'  said  Catherine  anxiously,  '  I 
am  tolerably  certain  Henslowe  will  turn  out  the  people.' 

He  would  not  dare,  Robert  thought.  At  any  rate,  the  law 
existed  for  such  cases,  and  it  was  his  bounden  duty  to  call  the 
inspector's  attention. 

Catherine  did  not  see  what  good  could  be  done  thereby,  and 
feared  harm.  But  her  wifely  chivalry  felt  that  he  must  get 
through  his  first  serious  practical  trouble  his  own  way.  She 
saw  that  he  felt  himself  distressingly  young  and  inexperienced, 
and  would  not  for  the  world  have  harassed  him  by  over  advice. 

So  she  let  him  alone,  and  presently  Robert  threw  the  matter 
from  him  with  a  sigh. 

'  Let  it  be  a  while,'  he  said,  with  a  shake  of  his  long  frame.  '  I 
shall  get  morbid  over  it  if  I  don't  mind.  I  am  a  selfish  wretch 
too.  I  know  you  have  worries  of  your  own,  wifie.' 

And  he  took  her  hand  under  the  trees  and  kissed  it  with  a 
boyish  tenderness. 

'Yes,'  said  Catherine,  sighing,  and  then  paused.  'Robert,' 
she  burst  out  again,  '  I  am  certain  that  man  made  love  of  a  kind 
to  Rose.  He  will  never  think  of  it  again,  but  since  the  night 
before  last  she,  to  my  mind,  is  simply  a  changed  creature.' 

'  /  don't  see  it,'  said  Robert  doubtfully. 


CHAP,  xix  THE  SQUIRE  261 

Catherine  looked  at  him  with  a  little  angel  scorn  in  her  gray 
eyes.  That  men  should  make  their  seeing  in  such  matters  the 
measure  of  the  visible  ! 

'  You  have  been  studying  the  squire,  sir — I  have  been  study- 
ing Rose.' 

Then  she  poured  out  her  heart  to  him,  describing  the  little 
signs  of  change  and  suffering  her  anxious  sense  had  noted,  in 
spite  of  Rose's  proud  effort  to  keep  all  the  world,  but  especially 
Catherine,  at  arm's  length.  And  at  the  end  her  feeling  swept 
her  into  a  denunciation  of  Langham,  which  was  to  Robert  like 
a  breath  from  the  past,  from  those  stern  hills  wherein  he  met 
her  first.  The  happiness  of  their  married  life  had  so  softened 
or  masked  all  her  ruggedness  of  character,  that  there  was  a 
certain  joy  in  seeing  those  strong  forces  in  her  which  had  struck 
him  first  reappear. 

'  Of  course  I  feel  myself  to  blame,'  he  said  when  she  stopped. 
'  But  how  could  one  foresee,  with  such  an  inveterate  hermit  and 
recluse  ?  And  I  owed  him — I  owe  him — so  much.' 

'I  know,'  said  Catherine,  but  frowning  still.  It  probably 
seemed  to  her  that  that  old  debt  had  been  more  than  effaced. 

'  You  will  have  to  send  her  to  Berlin,'  said  Elsmere  after  a 
pause.  '  You  must  play  off  her  music  against  this  unlucky 
feeling.  If  it  exists  it  is  your  only  chance.' 

'  Yes,  she  must  go  to  Berlin,'  said  Catherine  slowly. 

Then  presently  she  looked  up,  a  flash  of  exquisite  feeling 
breaking  up  the  delicate  resolution  of  the  face. 

'  I  am  not  sad  about  that,  Robert.  Oh,  how  you  have  widened 
my  world  for  me  ! ' 

Suddenly  that  hour  in  Marrisdale  came  back  to  her.  They 
were  in  the  woodpath.  She  crept  inside  her  husband's  arm  and 
put  up  her  face  to  him,  swept  away  by  an  overmastering  impulse 
of  self-humiliating  love. 

The  next  day  Robert  walked  over  to  the  little  market  town 
of  Churton,  saw  the  discreet  and  long-established  solicitor  of 
the  place,  and  got  from  him  a  complete  account  of  the  present 
state  of  the  rural  sanitary  law.  The  first  step  clearly  was  to 
move  the  sanitary  inspector  ;  if  that  failed  for  any  reason,  then 
any  bond  fide  inhabitant  had  an  appeal  to  the  local  sanitary 
authority,  viz.  the  board  of  guardians.  Robert  walked  home 
pondering  his  information,  and  totally  ignorant  that  Henslowe, 
who  was  always  at  Churton  on  market-days,  had  been  in  the 
market-place  at  the  moment  when  the  rector's  tall  figure  had 
disappeared  within  Mr.  Dunstan's  office-door.  That  door  was 
unpleasantly  known  to  the  agent  in  connection  with  some 
energetic  measures  for  raising  money  he  had  been  lately  under 
the  necessity  of  employing,  and  it  had  a  way  of  attracting  his 
eyes  by  means  of  the  fascination  that  often  attaches  to  disagree- 
able objects. 

In  the  evening  Rose  was  sitting  listlessly  in  the  drawing- 
room.  Catherine  was  not  there,  so  her  novel  was  on  her  lap 


262  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

and  her  eyes  were  staring  intently  into  a  world  whereof  they 
only  had  the  key.  Suddenly  there  was  a  ring  at  the  bell.  The 
servant  came,  and  there  were  several  voices  and  a  sound  of 
much  shoe-scraping.  Then  the  swing-door  leading  to  the  study 
opened  and  Elsmere  and  Catherine  came  out.  Elsmere  stopped 
with  an  exclamation. 

His  visitors  were  two  men  from  Mile  End.  One  was  old 
Milsom,  more  sallow  and  palsied  than  ever.  As  he  stood  bent 
almost  double,  his  old  knotted  hand  resting  for  support  on  the 
table  beside  him,  everything  in  the  little  hall  seemed  to  shake 
with  him.  The  other  was  Sharland,  the  handsome  father  of  the 
twins,  whose  wife  had  been  fed  by  Catherine  with  every 
imaginable  delicacy  since  Robert's  last  visit  to  the  hamlet. 
Even  his  strong  youth  had  begun  to  show  signs  of  premature 
decay.  The  rolling  gipsy  eyes  were  growing  sunken,  the  limbs 
dragged  a  little. 

They  had  come  to  implore  the  rector  to  let  Mile  End  alone. 
Henslowe  had  been  over  there  in  the  afternoon,  and  had  given 
them  all  very  plainly  to  understand  that  if  Mr.  Elsmere  meddled 
any  more  they  would  be  all  turned  out  at  a  week's  notice  to  shift 
as  they  could.  '  And  if  you  don't  find  Thurston  Common  nice 
lying  this  weather,  with  the  winter  coming  on,  you'll  know  who 
to  thank  for  it,'  the  agent  had  flung  behind  him  as  he  rode  off. 

Robert  turned  white.  Rose,  watching  the  little  scene  with 
listless  eyes,  saw  him  towering  over  the  group  like  an  embodi- 
ment of  wrath  and  pity. 

'  If  they  turn  us  out,  sir,'  said  old  Milsom,  wistfully  looking 
up  at  Elsmere  with  blear  eyes,  '  there'll  be  nothing  left  but  the 
House  for  us  old  'uns.  Why,  lor'  bless  you,  sir,  it's  not  so  bad 
but  we  can  make  shift.' 

'You,  Milsom  !'  cried  Robert;  'and  you've  just  all  but  lost 
your  grandchild !  And  you  know  your  wife  11  never  be  the 
same  woman  since  that  bout  of  fever  in  the  spring.  And — 

His  quick  eyes  ran  over  the  old  man's  broken  frame  with  a 
world  of  indignant  meaning  in  them. 

'  Ay,  ay,  sir,'  said  Milsom,  unmoved.  '  But  if  it  isn't  fevers, 
it's  summat  else.  I  can  make  a  shilling  or  two  where  I  be, 
speshally  in  the  first  part  of  the  year,  in  the  basket  work,  and 
my  wife  she  goes  charring  up  at  Mr.  Carter's  farm,  and  Mr. 
Dodson,  him  at  the  farther  farm,  he  do  give  us  a  bit  sometimes. 
Ef  you  git  us  turned  away  it  will  be  a  bad  day's  work  for  all  on 
us,  sir,  you  may  take  my  word  on  it.' 

'And  my  wife  so  ill,  Mr.  Elsmere,'  said  Sharland,  'and  all 
those  childer !  I  can't  walk  three  miles  farther  to  my  work, 
Mr.  Elsmere,  I  can't  nohow.  I  haven't  got  the  legs  for  it.  Let 
un  be,  sir.  We'll  rub  along.' 

Robert  tried  to  argue  the  matter. 

If  they  would  but  stand  by  him  he  would  fight  the  matter 
through,  and  they  should  not  suffer,  if  he  had  to  get  up  a  public 
subscription,  or  support  them  out  of  his  own  pocket  all  the 


ix  THE  SQUIRE  263 

winter.  A  bold  front,  and  Mr.  Henslowe  must  give  way.  The 
law  was  on  their  side,  and  every  labourer  in  Surrey  would  be 
the  better  off  for  their  refusal  to  be  housed  like  pigs  and 
poisoned  like  vermin. 

In  vain.  There  is  an  inexhaustible  store  of  cautious  endur- 
ance in  the  poor  against  which  the  keenest  reformer  constantly 
throws  himself  in  vain.  Elsmere  was  beaten.  The  two  men 
got  his  word,  and  shuffled  off  back  to  their  pestilential  hovels,  a 
pathetic  content  beaming  on  each  face. 

Catherine  and  Robert  went  back  into  the  study.  Rose  heard 
her  brother-in-law's  passionate  sigh  as  the  door  swung  behind 
them. 

'  Defeated  ! '  she  said  to  herself  with  a  curious  accent.  '  Well, 
everybody  must  have  his  turn.  Robert  has  been  too  successful 
in  his  life,  I  tliink. — You  wretch  ! '  she  added,  after  a  minute, 
laying  her  bright  head  down  on  the  book  before  her. 

Next  morning  his  wife  found  Elsmere  after  breakfast  busily 
packing  a  case  of  books  in  the  study.  They  were  books  from 
the  Hall  library,  which  so  far  had  been  for  months  the  insepar- 
able companions  of  his  historical  work. 

Catherine  stood  and  watched  him  sadly. 

'Must  you,  Robert?' 

'I  won't  be  beholden  to  that  man  for  anything  an  hour 
longer  than  I  can  help,'  he  answered  her. 

When  the  packing  was  nearly  finished  he  came  up  to  where 
she  stood  in  the  open  window. 

'  Things  won't  be  as  easy  for  us  in  the  future,  darling,'  he  said 
to  her.  '  A  rector  with  both  squire  and  agent  against  him  is 
rather  heavily  handicapped.  We  must  make  up  our  minds  to 
that.' 

'  I  have  no  great  fear,'  she  said,  looking  at  him  proudly. 

'Oh,  well — nor  I — perhaps,'  he  admitted,  after  a  moment. 
'  We  can  hold  pur  own.  But  I  wish — oh,  I  wish ' — and  he  laid 
his  hand  on  his  wife's  shoulder — 'I  could  have  made  friends 
with  the  squire.' 

Catherine  looked  less  responsive. 

'  As  squire,  Robert,  or  as  Mr.  Wendover  ? ' 

'  As  both,  of  course,  but  specially  as  Mr.  Wendover.' 

'  We  can  do  without  his  friendship,'  she  said  with  energy. 

Robert  gave  a  great  stretch,  as  though  to  work  off  his  regrets. 

'All,  but,'  he  said,  half  to  himself,  as  his  arms  dropped,  'if 
you  are  just  filled  with  the  hunger  to  know,  the  people  who 
know  as  much  as  the  squire  become  very  interesting  to  you  ! ' 

Catherine  did  not  answer.  But  probably  her  heart  went  out 
once  more  in  protest  against  a  knowledge  that  was  to  her  but  a 
form  of  revolt  against  the  awful  powers  of  man's  destiny. 

'  However,  here  go  his  books,'  said  Robert. 

Two  days  later  Mrs.  Leyburn  and  Agnes  made  their  appear- 
ance Mrs.  Leyburn  all  in  a  flutter  concerning  the  event  over 


264  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

which,  in  her  own  opinion,  she  had  come  to  preside.  In  her 
gentle  fluid  mind  all  impressions  were  short -lived.  She  had 
Forgotten  how  she  had  brought  up  her  own  babies,  but  Mrs. 
Thornburgh,  who  had  never  had  any,  had  filled  her  full  of 
nursery  lore.  She  sat  retailing  a  host  of  second-hand  hints  and 
instructions  to  Catherine,  who  would  every  now  and  then  lay 
her  hand  smiling  on  her  mother's  knee,  well  pleased  to  see  the 
flush  of  pleasure  on  the  pretty  old  face,  and  ready,  in  her  patient 
filial  way,  to  let  herself  be  experimented  on  to  the  utmost,  if  it 
did  but  make  the  poor  foolish  thing  happy. 

Then  came  a  night  when  every  soul  in  the  quiet  rectory,  even 
hot,  smarting  Rose,  was  possessed  by  one  thought  through  many 
terrible  hours,  and  one  only — the  thought  of  Catherine's  safety. 
It  was  strange  and  unexpected,  but  Catherine,  the  most  normal 
and  healthy  of  women,  had  a  hard  struggle  for  her  own  life  and 
her  child'Sj  and  it  was  not  till  the  gray  autumn  morning,  after  a 
day  and  night  which  left  a  permanent  mark  on  Robert,  that  he 
was  summoned  at  last,  and  with  the  sense  of  one  emerging  from 
black  gulfs  of  terror,  received  from  his  wife's  languid  hand  the 
tiny  fingers  of  his  firstborn. 

The  days  that  followed  were  full  of  emotion  for  these  two 
people,  who  were  perhaps  always  over-serious,  over-sensitive. 
They  had  no  idea  of  minimising  the  great  common  experiences 
of  life.  Both  of  them  were  really  simple,  brought  up  in  old- 
fashioned  simple  ways,  easily  touched,  responsive  to  all  that 
high  spiritual  education  which  flows  from  the  familiar  incidents 
of  the  human  story,  approached  poetically  and  passionately. 
As  the  young  husband  sat  in  the  quiet  of  his  wife's  room,  the 
occasional  restless  movements  of  the  small  brown  head  against 
her  breast  causing  the  only  sound  perceptible  in  the  country 
silence,  he  felt  all  the  deep  familiar  currents  of  human  feeling 
sweeping  through  him — love,  reverence,  thanksgiving — and  all 
the  walls  of  the  soul,  as  it  were,  expanding  and  enlarging  as 
they  passed. 

Responsive  creature  that  he  was,  the  experience  of  these 
days  was  hardly  happiness.  It  went  too  deep  ;  it  brought  him 
too  poignantly  near  to  all  that  is  most  real  and  therefore  most 
tragic  in  life. 

Catherine's  recovery  also  was  slower  than  might  have  been 
expected,  considering  her  constitutional  soundness,  and  for  the 
first  week,  after  that  faint  moment  of  joy  when  her  child  was 
laid  upon  her  arm,  and  she  saw  her  husband's  quivering  face 
above  her,  there  was  a  kind  of  depression  hovering  over  her. 
Robert  felt  it,  and  felt  too  that  all  his  devotion  could  not  soothe 
it  away.  At  last  she  said  to  him  one  evening,  in  the  encroach- 
ing September  twilight,  speaking  with  a  sudden  hurrying 
vehemence,  wholly  unlike  herself,  as  though  a  barrier  of  reserve 
had  given  way, — 

'  Robert,  I  cannot  put  it  out  of  my  head.  I  cannot  forget  it, 
the  pain  of  the  world  !' 


ix  THE  SQUIRE  265 

He  shut  the  book  lie  was  reading,  her  hand  in  his,  and  bent 
over  her  with  questioning  eyes. 

'  It  seems,'  she  went  on,  with  that  difficulty  which  a  strong 
nature  always  feels  in  self -revelation,  '  to  take  the  joy  even  out 
of  our  love — and  the  child.  I  feel  ashamed  almost  that  mere 
physical  pain  should  have  laid  such  hold  on  me — and  yet  I  can't 
get  away  from  it.  It's  not  for  myself,'  and  she  smiled  faintly 
at  him.  '  Comparatively  I  had  so  little  to  bear  !  But  I  know 
now  for  the  first  time  what  physical  pain  may  mean — and  I 
never  knew  before  !  I  lie  thinking,  Robert,  about  all  creatures 
in  pain — workmen  crushed  by  machinery,  or  soldiers — or  poor 
things  in  hospitals — above  all  of  women  !  Oh,  when  I  get  well, 
how  I  will  take  care  of  the  women  here  !  What  women  must 
sutler  even  here  in  out-of-the-way  cottages — no  doctor,  no  kind 
nursing,  all  blind  agony  and  struggle  !  And  women  in  London 
in  dens  like  those  Mr.  Newcome  got  into,  degraded,  forsaken, 
ill-treated,  the  thought  of  the  child  only  an  extra  horror  and 
burden  !  And  the  pain  all  the  time  so  merciless,  so  cruel — no 
escape  !  Oh,  to  give  all  one  is,  or  ever  can  be,  to  comforting  ! 
And  yet  the  great  sea  of  it  one  can  never  touch  !  It  is  a  night- 
mare— I  am  weak  still,  I  suppose  ;  I  don't  know  myself ;  but  I 
can  see  nothing  but  jarred,  tortured  creatures  everywhere.  All 
my  own  joys  and  comforts  seem  to  lift  me  selfishly  above  the 
common  lot.' 

She  stopped,  her  large  gray-blue  eyes  dim  with  tears,  trying 
once  more  for  that  habitual  self-restraint  which  physical  weak- 
ness had  shaken. 

'  You  are  weak,'  he  said,  caressing  her,  '  and  that  destroys  for 
a  time  the  normal  balance  of  things.  It  is  true,  darling,  but  we 
are  not  meant  to  see  it  always  so  clearly.  God  knows  we  could 
not  bear  it  if  we  did.' 

'  And  to  think,'  she  said,  shuddering  a  little, '  that  there  are 
men  and  women  who  in  the  face  of  it  can  still  refuse  Christ  and 
the  Cross,  can  still  say  this  life  is  all !  How  can  they  live — how 
dare  they  live  ? ' 

Then  he  saw  that  not  only  man's  pain,  but  man's  defiance, 
had  been  haunting  her,  and  he  guessed  what  persons  and 
memories  had  been  flitting  through  her  mind.  But  he  dared 
not  talk  lest  she  should  exhaust  herself.  Presently,  seeing  a 
volume  of  Augustine's  Confessions,  her  favourite  book,  lying 
beside  her,  he  took  it  up,  turning  over  the  pages,  and  weaving 
passages  together  as  they  caught  his  eye. 

'  Speak  to  me,  for  Thy  compassion's  sake,  0  Lord  my  God,  and 
tell  me  what  art  Thou  to  me  I  Say  unto  my  soul,  "  /  am  thy 
salvation  ! "  Speak  it  that  I  may  hear.  Behold  the  ears  of  my 
heart,  0  Lord;  open  them  and  say  unto  my  soul,  "I  am  thy 
salvation/"  I  will  follow  after  this  voice  of  Thine,  I  will  lay  hold 
on  Tfiee.  The  temple  of  my  soul,  wherein  T/iou  shouldest  enter,  is 
narrow,  do  Thou  enlarge  it.  It  falleth  into  ruins — do  Tliou  re- 
build it  I  .  .  .  Woe  to  that  bold  soul  which  hopetli,  if  it  du  bui 


266  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

let  Thee  go,  to  find _  something  better  t/tan  Thee  !  It  turneth  hither 
and  thither,  on  this  side  and  on  that,  and  all  things  are  hard  and 
bitter  unto  it.  For  Thou  only  art  rest  /  .  .  .  Whithersoever  the 
soul  of  man  turneth  it  findeth  sorrow,  except  only  in  Thee.  Fix 
there,  then,  thy  resting-place,  my  soul  I  Lay  up  in  Him  whatever 
thou  hast  received  from  Him.  Commend  to  the  keeping  of  the 
Truth  whatever  the  Truth  hath  given  thee,  and  thou  shalt  lose 
nothing.  And  thy  dead  things  shall  revive  and  thy  weak  things 
shall  be  made  whole  ! ' 

She  listened,  appropriating  and  clinging  to  every  word,  till 
the  nervous  clasp  of  the  long  delicate  fingers  relaxed,  her  head 
dropped  a  little,  gently,  against  the  head  of  the  child,  and  tired 
with  much  feeling  she  slept. 

Robert  slipped  away  and  strolled  out  into  the  garden  in  the 
fast -gathering  darkness.  His  mind  was  full  of  that  intense 
spiritual  life  of  Catherine's  which  in  its  wonderful  self-con- 
tainedness  and  strength  was  always  a  marvel,  sometimes  a 
reproach,  to  him.  Beside  her,  he  seemed  to  himself  a  light 
creature,  drawn  hither  and  thither  by  this  interest  and  by  that, 
tangled  in  the  fleeting  shows  of  things — the  toy  and  plaything 
of  circumstance.  He  thought  ruefully  and  humbly,  as  he 
wandered  on  through  the  dusk,  of  his  own  lack  of  inward- 
ness :  '  Everything  divides  me  from  Thee ! '  he  could  have 
cried  in  St.  Augustine's  manner.  'Books,  and  friends,  and 
work — all  seem  to  hide  Thee  from  me.  Why  am  I  so  passion- 
ate for  this  and  that,  for  all  these  sections  and  fragments  of 
Thee  ?  Oh,  for  the  One,  the  All !  Fix  there  thy  resting-place, 
my  soul ! ' 

And  presently,  after  this  cry  of  self-reproach,  he  turned  to 
muse  on  that  intuition  of  the  world's  pain  which  had  been 
troubling  Catherine,  shrinking  from  it  even  more  than  she  had 
shrunk  from  it,  in  proportion  as  his  nature  was  more  imagina- 
tive than  hers.  And  Christ  the  only  clue,  the  only  remedy — no 
other  anywhere  in  this  vast  universe,  where  all  men  are  under 
sentence  of  death,  where  the  whole  creation  groaneth  and 
travaileth  in  pain  together  until  now  ! 

And  yet  what  countless  generations  of  men  had  borne  their 
pain,  knowing  nothing  of  the  one  Healer.  He  thought  of 
Buddhist  patience  and  Buddhist  charity  ;  of  the  long  centuries 
during  which  Chaldean  or  Persian  or  Egyptian  lived,  suffered, 
and  died,  trusting  the  gods  they  knew.  And  how  many  other 
generations,  nominally  children  of  the  Great  Hope,  had  used  it 
as  the  mere  instrument  of  passion  or  of  hate,  cursing  in  the 
name  of  love,  destroying  in  the  name  of  pity  !  For  how  much 
of  the  world's  pain  was  not  Christianity  itself  responsible  ?  His 
thoughts  recurred  with  a  kind  of  anguished  perplexity  to  some 
of  the  problems  stirred  in  him  of  late  by  his  historical  reading. 
The  strifes  and  feuds  and  violences  of  the  early  Church  re- 
turned to  weigh  upon  him — the  hair-splitting  superstition,  the 
selfish  passion  for  power.  He  recalled  Gibbon's  lamentation 


CHAP,  xix  THE  SQUIRE  267 

over  the  age  of  the  Antonines,  and  Mommsen's  grave  doubt 
whether,  taken  as  a  whole,  the  area  once  covered  by  the  Roman 
Empire  can  be  said  to  be  substantially  happier  now  than  in  the 
days  of  Severus. 

0  corruptio  optimi  /  That  men  should  have  been  so  little 
affected  by  that  shining  ideal  of  the  New  Jerusalem, '  descended 
out  of  Heaven  from  God,'  into  their  very  midst — that  the  print 
of  the  'blessed  feet'  along  the  world's  highway  should  have 
been  so  often  buried  in  the  sands  of  cruelty  and  fraud  ! 

The  September  wind  blew  about  him  as  he  strolled  through 
the  darkening  column,  set  thick  with  great  bushes  of  sombre 
juniper  among  the  yellowing  fern,  which  stretched  away  on  the 
left-hand  side  of  the  road  leading  to  the  Hall.  He  stood  and 
watched  the  masses  of  restless  discordant  cloud  which  the  sun- 
set had  left  behind  it,  thinking  the  while  of  Mr.  Grey,  of  his 
assertions  and  his  denials.  Certain  phrases  of  his  which  Robert 
had  heard  drop  from  him  on  one  or  two  rare  occasions  during 
the  later  stages  of  his  Oxford  life  ran  through  his  head. 

' The  fairy-tale  of  Christianity' — ' The  origins  q/  Christian 
Mythology.'  He  could  recall,  as  the  words  rose  in  his  memory, 
the  simplicity  of  the  rugged  face,  and  the  melancholy  mingled 
with  fire  which  had  always  marked  the  great  tutors  sayings 
about  religion. 

'  Fairy  Tale  / '  Could  any  reasonable  man  watch  a  life  like 
Catherine's  and  believe  that  nothing  but  a  delusion  lay  at  the 
heart  of  it  ?  And  as  he  asked  the  question,  he  seemed  to  hear 
Mr.  Grey's  answer  :  'All  religions  are  true,  and  all  are  false. 
In  them  all,  more  or  less  visibly,  man  grasps  at  the  one  thing 
needful — self  forsaken,  God  laid  hold  of.  The  spirit  in  them  all 
is  the  same,  answers  eternally  to  reality ;  it  is  but  the  letter, 
the  fashion,  the  imagery,  that  are  relative  and  changing.' 

He  turned  and  walked  homeward,  struggling,  with  a  host  of 
tempestuous  ideas  as  swift  and  varying  as  the  autumn  clouds 
hurrying  overhead.  And  then,  through  a  break  in  a  line  of 
trees,  he  caught  sight  of  the  tower  and  chancel  window  of  the 
little  church.  In  an  instant  he  had  a  vision  of  early  summer 
mornings — dewy,  perfumed,  silent,  save  for  the  birds,  and  all 
the  soft  stir  of  rural  birth  and  growth,  of  a  chancel  fragrant 
with  many  flowers,  of  a  distant  church  with  scattered  figures, 
of  the  kneeling  form  of  his  wife  close  beside  him,  himself  bend- 
ing over  her,  the  sacrament  of  the  Lord's  death  in  his  hand. 
The  emotion,  the  intensity,  the  absolute  self-surrender  of  in- 
numerable such  moments  in  the  past — moments  of  a  common 
faith,  a  common  self-abasement — came  flooding  back  upon  him. 
With  a  movement  of  joy  and  penitence,  he  threw  himself  at  the 
feet  of  Catherine's  Master  and  his  own  :  '  Fix  there  thy  resting- 
place,  my  soul  1 ' 


268  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 


CHAPTER   XX 

CATHERINE'S  later  convalescence  dwelt  in  her  mind  in  after 
years  as  a  time  of  peculiar  softness  and  peace.  Her  baby -girl 
throve  ;  Robert  had  driven  the  squire  and  Henslowe  out  of  his 
mind,  and  was  all  eagerness  as  to  certain  negotiations  with  a 
famous  naturalist  for  a  lecture  at  the  village  club.  At  Mile  End, 
as  though  to  put  the  rector  in  the  wrong,  serious  illness  had 
for  the  time  disappeared  ;  and  Mrs.  Leyburn's  mild  chatter,  as 
she  gently  poked  about  the  house  and  garden,  went  out  in 
Catherines  pony  -  carriage,  inspected  Catherine's  stores,  and 
hovered  over  Catherine's  babe,  had  a  constantly  cheering  effect 
on  the  still  languid  mother.  Like  all  theorists,  especially  those 
at  second-hand,  Mrs.  Leyburn's  maxims  had  been  very  much 
routed  by  the  event.  The  babe  had  ailments  she  did  not  under- 
stand, or  it  developed  likes  and  dislikes  she  had  forgotten 
existed  in  babies,  and  Mrs.  Leyburn  was  nonplussed.  She  would 
sit  with  it  on  her  lap,  anxiously  studying  its  peculiarities.  She 
was  sure  it  squinted,  that  its  back  was  weaker  than  other  babies, 
that  it  cried  more  than  hers  had  ever  done.  She  loved  to  be 
plaintive ;  it  would  have  seemed  to  her  unladylike  to  be  too 
cheerful,  even  over  a  first  grandchild. 

Agnes  meanwhile  made  herself  practically  useful,  as  was 
her  way,  and  she  did  almost  more  than  anybody  to  beguile 
Catherine's  recovery  by  her  hours  of  Long  Whindale  chat.  She 
had  no  passionate  feeling  about  the  place  and  the  people  as 
Catherine  had,  but  she  was  easily  content,  and  she  had  a  good 
wholesome  feminine  curiosity  as  to  the  courtings  and  weddings 
and  buryings  of  the  human  beings  about  her.  So  she  would 
sit  and  chat,  working  the  while  with  the  quickest,  neatest  of 
fingers,  till  Catherine  knew  as  much  about  Jenny  Tyson's 
Whinborough  lover,  and  Farmer  Tredall's  troubles  with  his  son, 
and  the  way  in  which  that  odious  woman  Molly  Redgold  bullied 
her  little  consumptive  husband,  as  Agnes  knew,  which  was  say- 
ing a  good  deal. 

About  themselves  Agnes  was  frankness  itself. 

'  Since  you  went,'  she  would  say  with  a  shrug,  '  I  keep  the 
coach  steady,  perhaps,  but  Rose  drives,  and  we  shall  have  to  go 
where  she  takes  us.  By  the  way,  Cathie,  what  have  you  been 
doing  to  her  here  ?  She  is  not  a  bit  like  herself.  I  don't 
generally  mind  being  snubbed.  It  amuses  her  and  doesn't  hurt 
me  :  and,  of  course,  I  know  I  am  meant  to  be  her  foil.  But, 
really,  sometimes  she  is  too  bad  even  for  me.' 

Catherine  sighed,  but  held  her  peace.  Like  all  strong  per- 
sons, she  kept  things  very  much  to  herself.  It  only  made  vexa- 
tions more  real  to  talk  about  them.  But  she  and  Agnes  discussed 
the  winter  and  Berlin. 

'  You  had  better  let  her  go,'  said  Agnes  significantly ;  '  she 
will  go  anyhow ' 


CITAP.  xx  THE  SQUIRE  269 

A  few  days  afterwards  Catherine,  opening  the  drawing-room 
door  unexpectedly,  came  upon  Rose  sitting  idly  at  the  piano, 
her  hands  resting  on  the  keys,  and  her  great  gray  eyes  straining 
out  of  her  white  face  with  an  expression  which  sent  the  sister's 
heart  into  her  shoes. 

'  How  you  steal  about,  Catherine  ! '  cried  the  player,  getting 
up  and  shutting  the  piano.  '  I  declare  you  are  just  like  Millais's 
Gray  Lady  in  that  ghostly  gown.' 

Catherine  came  swiftly  across  the  floor.  She  had  just  left 
her  child,  and  the  sweet  dignity  of  motherhood  was  in  her  step, 
her  look.  She  came  and  threw  her  arms  round  the  girl. 

'  Rose,  dear,  I  have  settled  it  all  with  mamma.  The  money 
can  be  managed,  and  you  shall  go  to  Berlin  for  the  winter  when 
you  like.' 

She  drew  herself  back  a  little,  still  with  her  arms  round  Rose's 
waist,  and  looked  at  her  smiling,  to  see  how  she  took  it. 

Rose  had  a  strange  movement  of  irritation.  She  drew  herself 
out  of  Catherine's  grasp. 

'  I  don't  know  that  I  had  settled  on  Berlin,'  she  said  coldly. 
'  Very  possibly  Leipsic  would  be  better.' 

Catherine's  face  fell. 

'Whichever  you  like,  dear.  I  have  been  thinking  about  it 
ever  since  that  day  you  spoke  of  it — -you  remember — and  now 
I  have  talked  it  over  with  mamma.  If  she  can't  manage  all  the 
expense  we  will  help.  Oh.  Rose,'  and  she  came  nearer  again, 
timidly,  her  eyes  melting,  '  I  know  we  haven't  understood  each 
other.  I  have  been  ignorant,  I  think,  and  narrow.  But  I  meant 
it  for  the  best,  dear — I  did ' 

Her  voice  failed  her,  but  in  her  look  there  seemed  to  be 
written  the  history  of  all  the  prayers  and  yearnings  of  her 
youth  over  the  pretty  wayward  child  who  had  been  her  joy  and 
torment.  Rose  could  not  but  meet  that  look — its  nobleness,  its 
humble  surrender. 

Suddenly  two  large  tears  rolled  down  her  cheeks.  She  dashed 
them  away  impatiently. 

'  I  am  not  a  bit  well,'  she  said,  as  though  in  irritable  excuse 
both  to  herself  and  Catherine.  '  I  believe  I  have  had  a  headache 
for  a  fortnight.' 

And  then  she  put  her  arms  down  on  a  table  near  and  hid  her 
face  upon  them.  She  was  one  bundle  of  jarring  nerves — sore, 
poor  passionate  child,  that  she  was  betraying  herself  ;  sorer  still 
that,  as  she  told  herself,  Catherine  was  sending  her  to  Berlin  as 
a  consolation.  When  girls  have  love -troubles  the  first  thing 
their  elders  do  is  to  look  for  a  diversion.  She  felt  sick  and 
humiliated.  Catherine  had  been  talking  her  over  with  the 
family,  she  supposed. 

Meanwhile  Catherine  stood  by  her  tenderly,  stroking  her 
hair  and  saying  soothing  things. 

'  I  am  sure  you  will  be  happy  at  Berlin,  Rose.  And  you 
mustn't  loave  me  out  of  your  lite,  dear,  though  I  am  so  stupid 


270  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

and  unmusical.  You  must  write  to  me  about  all  you  do.  We 
must  begin  a  new  time.  Oh,  I  feel  so  guilty  sometimes/  she 
went  on,  falling  into  a  low  intensity  of  voice  that  startled  Rose, 
and  made  her  look  hurriedly  up.  'I  fought  against  your  music, 
I  suppose,  because  I  thought  it  was  devouring  you — leaving  no 
room  for — for  religion — for  God.  I  was  jealous  of  it  for  Christ's 
sake.  And  all  the  time  I  was  blundering  !  Oh,  Rose,'  and  she  sank 
on  her  knees  beside  the  chair,  resting  her  head  against  the  girl's 
shoulder,  '  papa  charged  me  to  make  you  love  God,  and  I  tor- 
ture myself  with  thinking  that,  instead,  it  has  been  my  doing, 
my  foolish  clumsy  doing,  that  you  have  come  to  think  religion 
dull  and  hard.  Oh,  my  darling,  if  I  could  make  amends — if  I 
could  get  you  not  to  love  your  art  less  but  to  love  it  in  God  ! 
Christ  is  the  first  reality  ;  all  things  else  are  real  and  lovely  in 
Him.  Oh,  I  have  been  frightening  you  away  from  Him !  I 
ought  to  have  drawn  you  near.  I  have  been  so — so  silent,  so 
shut  up,  I  have  never  tried  to  make  you  feel  what  it  was  kept 
me  at  His  feet !  Oh,  Rose,  darling,  you  think  the  world  real, 
and  pleasure  and  enjoyment  real.  But  if  I  could  have  made 
you  see  and  know  the  things  I  have  seen  up  in  the  mountains 
— among  the  poor,  the  dying — you  would  h&vefelt  Him  saving, 
redeeming,  interceding,  as  I  did.  Oh,  then  you  must,  you  would 
have  known  that  Christ  only  is  real,  that  our  joys  can  only  truly 
exist  in  Him.  I  should  have  been  more  open — more  faithful — 
more  humble.' 

She  paused  with  a  long  quivering  sigh.  Rose  suddenly  lifted 
herself,  and  they  fell  into  each  other's  arms. 

Rose,  shaken  and  excited,  thought,  of  course,  of  that  night  at 
Burwood,  when  she  had  won  leave  to  go  to  Manchester.  This 
scene  was  the  sequel  to  that — the  next  stage  in  one  and  the 
same  process.  Her  feeling  was  much  the  same  as  that  of  the 
naturalist  who  comes  close  to  any  of  the  hidden  operations  of 
life.  She  had  come  near  to  Catherine's  spirit  in  the  growing. 
Beside  that  sweet  expansion,  how  poor  and  feverish  and  earth- 
stained  the  poor  child  felt  herself  ! 

But  there  were  many  currents  in  Rose — many  things  striving 
for  the  mastery.  She  kissed  Catherine  once  or  twice,  then  she 
drew  herself  back  suddenly,  looking  into  the  other's  face.  A 
great  wave  of  feeling  rushed  up  and  broke. 

'  Catherine,  could  you  ever  have  married  a  man  that  did  not 
believe  in  Christ  ? ' 

She  flung  the  question  out — a  kind  of  morbid  curiosity,  a 
wild  wish  to  find  an  outlet  of  some  sort  for  things  pent  up  in 
her,  driving  her  on. 

Catherine  started.  But  she  met  Rose's  half-frowning  eyes 
steadily. 

'  Never,  Rose  !    To  me  it  would  not  be  marriage.' 

The  child's  face  lost  its  softness.     She  drew  one  hand  away. 

'  What  have  we  to  do  with  it  1 '  she  cried.  '  Each  one  for 
himself.' 


CHAP,  xx  THE  SQUIRE  271 

'  But  marriage  makes  two  one,'  said  Catherine,  pale,  but  with 
a  firm  clearness.  '  And  if  husband  and  wife  are  only  one  in 
body  and  estate,  not  one  in  soul,  why,  who  that  believes  in  the 
soul  would  accept  such  a  bond,  endure  such  a  miserable  second 
best?' 

She  rose.  But  though  her  voice  had  recovered  all  its  energy, 
her  attitude,  her  look  was  still  tenderness,  still  yearning  itself. 

'  Religion  does  not  fill  up  the  soul,'  said  Rose  slowly.  Then 
she  added  carelessly,  a  passionate  red  flying  into  her  cheek 
against  her  will,  '  However,  I  cannot  imagine  any  question  that 
interests  me  personally  less.  I  was  curious  what  you  would 
say.' 

And  she  too  got  up,  drawing  her  hand  lightly  along  the 
keyboard  of  the  piano.  Her  pose  had  a  kind  of  defiance  in  it ; 
her  knit  brows  forbade  Catherine  to  ask  questions.  Catherine 
stood  irresolute.  Should  she  throw  herself  on  her  sister,  im- 
ploring her  to  speak,  opening  her  own  heart  on  the  subject  of 
this  wild  unhappy  fancy  for  a  man  who  would  never  think 
again  of  the  child  he  had  played  with  ? 

But  the  North-country  dread  of  words,  of  speech  that  only 
defines  and  magnifies,  prevailed.  Let  there  be  no  words,  but 
let  her  love  and  watch. 

So,  after  a  moment's  pause,  she  began  in  a  different  tone 
upon  the  inquiries  she  had  been  making,  the  arrangements  that 
would  be  wanted  for  this  musical  winter.  Rose  was  almost 
listless  at  first.  A  stranger  would  have  thought  she  was  being 
persuaded  into  something  against  her  will.  But  she  could  not 
keep  it  up.  The  natural  instinct  reasserted  itself,  and  she  was 
soon  planning  and  deciding  as  sharply,  and  with  as  much  young 
omniscience,  as  usual. 

By  the  evening  it  was  settled.  Mrs.  Leyburn,  much  be- 
wildered, asked  Catherine  doubtfully,  the  last  thing  at  night, 
whether  she  wanted  Rose  to  be  a  professional.  Catherine 
exclaimed. 

'But,  my  dear,'  said  the  widow, ^ staring  pensively  into  her 
bedroom  fire,  '  what's  she  to  do  with  all  this  music  ? '  Then 
after  a  second  she  added  half  severely :  '  I  don't  believe  her 
father  would  have  liked  it ;  I  don't,  indeed,  Catherine  ! ' 

Poor  Catherine  smiled  and  sighed  in  the  background,  but 
made  no  reply. 

'  However,  she  never  looks  so  pretty  as  when  she's  playing 
the  violin — never  ! '  said  Mrs.  Leyburn  presently  in  the  distance, 
with  a  long  breath  of  satisfaction.  She's  got  such  a  lovely 
hand  and  arm,  Catherine !  They're  prettier  than  mine,  and 
even  your  father  used  to  notice  mine.' 

'  Even.'  The  word  had  a  little  sound  of  bitterness.  In  spite 
of  all  his  love,  had  the  gentle  puzzle-headed  woman  found  her 
unearthly  husband  often  very  hard  to  live  with  ? 

Rose  meanwhile  was  sitting  up  in  bed,  with  her  hands  round 
her  knees,  dreaming.  So  she  had  got  her  heart's  desire  !  There 


272  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

did  not  seem  to  be  much  joy  in  the  getting,  but  that  was  the 
way  of  things,  one  was  told.  She  knew  she  should  hate  the 
Germans — great,  bouncing,  over-fed,  sentimental  creatures  ! 

Then  her  thoughts  ran  into  the  future.  After  six  months — 
yes,  by  April — she  would  be  home,  and  Agnes  and  her  mother 
could  meet  her  in  London. 

London.  Ah,  it  was  London  she  was  thinking  of  all  the 
time,  not  Berlin  !  She  could  not  stay  in  the  present ;  or  rather 
the  Rose  of  the  present  went  straining  to  the  Rose  of  the  future, 
asking  to  be  righted,  to  be  avenged. 

'  I  will  learn — I  will  learn  fast — many  things  besides  music  ! ' 
she  said  to  herself  feverishly.  '  By  April  I  shall  be  much  cleverer. 
Oh,  then  I  won't  be  a  fool  so  easily.  We  shall  be  sure  to  meet, 
of  course.  But  he  shall  find  out  that  it  was  only  a  child,  only  a 
silly  soft-hearted  baby  he  played  with  down  here.  I  shan't  care 
for  him  in  the  least,  of  course  not.  not  after  six  months.  I  don't 
mean  to.  And  I  will  make  him  know  it — oh,  I  will,  though  he 
is  so  wise,  and  so  much  older,  and  mounts  on  such  stilts  when 
he  pleases ! ' 

So  once  more  Rose  flung  her  defiance  at  fate.  But  when 
Catherine  came  along  the  passage  an  hour  later  she  heard  low 
sounds  from  Rose's  room,  which  ceased  abruptly  as  her  step 
drew  near.  The  elder  sister  paused  ;  her  eyes  filled  with  tears  ; 
her  hand  closed  indignantly.  Then  she  came  closer,  all  but 
went  in,  thought  better  of  it,  and  moved  away.  If  there  is  any 
truth  in  brain- waves,  Langham  should  have  slept  restlessly  that 
night. 

Ten  days  later  an  escort  had  been  found,  all  preparations  had 
been  made,  and  Rose  was  gone. 

Mrs.  Leyburn  and  Agnes  lingered  a  while,  and  then  they  too 
departed  under  an  engagement  to  come  back  after  Christmas 
for  a  long  stay,  that  Mrs.  Leyburn  might  cheat  the  northern 
spring  a  little. 

So  husband  and  wife  were  alone  again.  How  they  relished 
their  solitude  !  Catherine  took  up  many  threads  of  work  which 
her  months  of  comparative  weakness  had  forced  her  to  let  drop. 
She  taught  vigorously  in  the  school ;  in  the  afternoons,  so  far  as 
her  child  would  let  her,  she  carried  her  tender  presence  and  her 
practical  knowledge  of  nursing  to  the  sick  and  feeble  ;  and  on 
two  evenings  in  the  week  she  and  Robert  threw  open  a  little 
room  there  was  on  the  ground-floor  between  the  study  and  the 
dining-room  to  the  women  and  girls  of  the  village,  as  a  sort  of 
drawing-room.  Hard- worked  mothers  would  come,  who  had  put 
their  fretful  babes  to  sleep,  and  given  their  lords  to  eat,  and  had 
just  energy  left,  while  the  eldest  daughter  watched,  and  the  men 
were  at  the  club  or  the  '  Blue  Boar,'  to  put  on  a  clean  apron  and 
climb  the  short  hill  to  the  rectory.  Once  there,  there  was 
nothing  to  think  of  for  an  hour  but  the  bright  room,  Catherine's 
kind  face,  the  rector's  jokes,  and  the  illustrated  papers  or  the 


<n\p.  xx  THE  SQUIRE  273 

photographs  that  were  spread  out  for  them  to  look  at  if  they 
would.  The  girls  learned  to  come,  because  Catherine  could 
teach  them  a  simple  dressmaking,  and  was  clever  in  catching 
stray  persons  to  set  them  singing ;  and  because  Mr.  Elsmere 
read  exciting  stories,  and  because  nothing  any  one  of  them  ever 
told  Mrs.  Elsmere  was  forgotten  by  her,  or  failed  to  interest  her. 
Any  of  her  social  equals  of  the  neighbourhood  would  have  hardly 
recognised  the  reserved  and  stately  Catherine  on  these  occasions. 
Here  she  felt  herself  at  home,  at  ease.  She  would  never,  indeed, 
have  Robert's  pliancy,  his  quick  divination,  and  for  some  time 
after  her  transplanting  the  North-country  woman  had  found  it 
very  difficult  to  suit  herself  to  a  new  shade  of  local  character. 
But  she  was  learning  from  Robert  every  day  ;  she  watched  him 
among  the  poor,  recognising  all  his  gifts  with  a  humble  intensity 
of  admiring  love,  which  said  little  but  treasured  everything, 
and  for  herself  her  inward  happiness  and  peace  shone  through 
her  quiet  ways,  making  her  the  mother  and  the  friend  of  all 
about  her. 

As  for  Robert,  he,  of  course,  was  living  at  high  pressure  all 
round.  Outside  his  sermons  and  his  school,  his  Natural  History 
Club  had  perhaps  most  of  his  heart,  and  the  passion  for  science, 
little  continuous  work  as  he  was  able  to  give  it,  grew  on  him 
more  and  more.  He  kept  up  as  best  he  could,  working  with  one 
hand,  so  to  speak,  when  he  could  not  spare  two,  and  in  his  long 
rambles  over  moor  and  hill,  gathering  in  with  his  quick  eye  a  har- 
vest of  local  fact  wherewith  to  feed  their  knowledge  and  his  own. 

The  mornings  he  always  spent  at  work  among  his  books,  the 
afternoons  in  endless  tramps  over  the  parish,  sometimes  alone, 
sometimes  with  Catherine  •  and  in  the  evenings,  if  Catherine 
was  '  at  home,'  twice  a  week  to  womankind,  he  had  his  nights 
when  his  study  became  the  haunt  and  prey  of  half  the  boys  in 
the  place,  who  were  free  of  everything,  as  soon  as  he  had  taught 
them  to  respect  his  books,  and  not  to  taste  his  medicines  ;  other 
nights  when  he  was  lecturing  or  story-telling  in  the  club  or  in 
some  outlying  hamlet ;  or  others  again,  when  with  Catherine 
l>eside  him  he  would  sit  trying  to  think  some  of  that  religious 
passion  which  burned  in  both  their  hearts,  into  clear  words  or 
striking  illustrations  for  his  sermons. 

Then  his  choir  was  much  upon  his  mind.  He  knew  nothing 
about  music,  nor  did  Catherine  ;  their  efforts  made  Rose  laugh 
irreverently  when  she  got  their  letters  at  Berlin.  But  Robert 
believed  in  a  choir  chiefly  as  an  excellent  social  and  centralising 
instrument.  There  had  been  none  in  Mr.  Preston's  day.  He 
was  determined  to  have  one,  and  a  good  one,  and  by  sheer  energy 
he  succeeded,  delighting  in  his  boyish  way  over  the  opposition 
some  of  his  novelties  excited  among  the  older  and  more  stifi- 
backed  inhabitants. 

'  Let  them  talk,'  he  would  say  brightly  to  Catherine.  '  They 
will  come  round  ;  and  talk  is  good.  Anytliing  to  make  them 
think,  to  stir  the  pool ! ' 


274  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  HI 

Of  course  that  old  problem  of  the  agricultural  labourer 
weighed  upon  him — his  grievances,  his  wants.  He  went  about 
pondering  the  English  land  system,  more  than  half  inclined  one 
day  to  sink  part  of  his  capital  in  a  peasant-proprietor  experi- 
ment, and  ingulfed  the  next  in  all  the  moral  and  economical 
objection,  to  the  French  system.  Land  for  allotments,  at  any 
rate,  he  had  set  his  heart  on.  But  in  this  direction,  as  in  many 
others,  the  way  was  barred.  All  the  land  in  the  parish  was  the 
squire's,  and  not  one  inch  of  the  squire's  land  would  Henslowe 
let  young  Elsmere  have  anything  to  do  with  if  he  knew  it.  He 
would  neither  repair  nor  enlarge  the  Workmen's  Institute  ;  and 
he  had  a  way  of  forgetting  the  squire's  customary  subscriptions 
to  parochial  objects,  always  paid  through  him,  which  gave  him 
much  food  for  chuckling  whenever  he  passed  Elsmere  in  the 
country  lanes.  The  man's  coarse  insolence  and  mean  hatred 
made  themselves  felt  at  every  turn,  besmirching  and  embittering. 

Still  it  was  very  true  that  neither  Henslowe  nor  the  squire 
could  do  Robert  much  harm.  His  hold  on  the  parish  was  visibly 
strengthening ;  his  sermons  were  not  only  filling  the  church 
with  his  own  parishioners,  but  attracting  hearers  from  the  dis- 
tricts round  Murewell,  so  that  even  on  these  winter  Sundays 
there  was  almost  always  a  sprinkling  of  strange  faces  among 
the  congregation  ;  and  his  position  in  the  county  and  diocese 
was  becoming  every  month  more  honourable  and  important. 
The  gentry  about  showed  them  much  kindness,  and  would  have 
shown  them  much  hospitality  if  they  had  been  allowed.  But 
though  Robert  had  nothing  of  the  ascetic  about  him,  and  liked 
the  society  of  his  equals  as  much  as  most  good-  tempered  and 
vivacious  people  do,  he  and  Catherine  decided  that  for  the 
present  they  had  no  time  to  spare  for  visits  and  county  society. 
Still,  of  course,  there  were  many  occasions  on  which  the  routine 
of  their  life  brought  them  across  their  neighbours,  and  it  began 
to  be  pretty  widely  recognised  that  Elsmere  was  a  young  fellow 
of  unusual  promise  and  intelligence,  that  his  wife  too  was  re- 
markable, and  that  between  them  they  were  likely  to  raise  the 
standard  of  clerical  effort  considerably  in  their  part  of  Surrey. 

All  the  factors  of  this  life — his  work,  his  influence,  his  re- 
covered health,  the  lavish  beauty  of  the  country,  Elsmere  en- 
joyed with  all  his  heart.  But  at  the  root  of  all  there  lay  what 
gave  value  and  savour  to  everything  else — that  exquisite  home- 
life  of  theirs,  that  tender,  triple  bond  of  husband,  wife,  and 
child. 

Catherine,  coming  home  tired  from  teaching  or  visiting, 
would  find  her  step  quickening  as  she  reached  the  gate  of  the 
rectory,  and  the  sense  of  delicious  possession  waking  up  in  her, 
which  is  one  of  the  first  fruits  of  motherhood.  There,  at  the 
window,  between  the  lamplight  behind  and  the  winter  dusk 
outside,  would  be  the  child  in  its  nurse's  arms,  little  wondering, 
motiveless  smiles  passing  over  the  tiny  puckered  face  that  was 
so  oddly  like  Robert  already.  And  afterwards,  in  the  fire-lit 


CHAP,  xx  THE  SQUIRE  275 

nursery,  with  the  bath  in  front  of  the  high  fender,  and  all  the 
necessaries  of  baby  life  beside  it,  she  would  go  through  those 
functions  which  mothers  love  and  linger  over,  let  the  kicking 
dimpled  creature  principally  concerned  protest  as  it  may  against 
the  over-refinements  of  civilisation.  Then,  when  the  little  rest- 
less voice  was  stilled,  and  the  cradle  left  silent  in  the  darkened 
room,  there  would  come  the  short  watching  for  Robert,  his 
voice,  his  kiss,  their  simple  meal  together,  a  moment  of  rest, 
of  laughter  and  chat,  before  some  fresh  effort  claimed  them. 
Every  now  and  then — white-letter  days — there  would  drop  on 
them  a  long  evening  together.  Then  out  would  come  one  of  the 
few  books — Dante  or  Virgil  or  Milton — which  had  entered  into 
the  fibre  of  Catherine's  strong  nature.  The  two  heads  would 
draw  close  over  them,  or  Robert  would  take  some  thought  of 
hers  as  a  text,  and  spout  away  from  the  hearthrug,  watching  all 
the  while  for  her  smile,  her  look  of  assent.  Sometimes,  late  at 
night,  when  there  was  a  sermon  on  his  mind,  he  would  dive  into 
his  pocket  for  his  Greek  Testament  and  make  her  read,  partly 
for  the  sake  of  teaching  her — for  she  knew  some  Greek  and 
longed  to  know  more — but  mostly  that  he  might  get  from  her 
some  of  that  garnered  wealth  of  spiritual  experience  which  he 
adored  in  her.  They  would  go  from  verse  to  verse,  from  thought 
to  thought,  till  suddenly  perhaps  the  tide  of  feeling  would  rise, 
and  while  the  wind  swept  round  the  house,  and  the  owls  hooted 
in  the  elms,  they  would  sit  hand  in  hand,  lost  in  love  and  faith, 
— Christ  near  them — Eternity,  warm  with  God,  enwrapping 
them.  « 

So  much  for  the  man  of  action,  the  husband,  the  philanthro- 

Slst.  In  reality,  great  as  was  the  moral  energy  of  this  period  of 
Ismere's  life,  the  dominant  distinguishing  note  of  it  was  not 
moral  but  intellectual. 

In  matters  of  conduct  he  was  but  developing  habits  and 
tendencies  already  strongly  present  in  him  ;  in  matters  of  think- 
ing, with  every  month  of  this  winter  he  was  becoming  conscious 
of  fresh  forces,  fresh  hunger,  fresh  horizons. 

'  One  half  of  your  day  be  the  king  of  your  world,'  Mr.  Grey  had 
said  to  him  ;  '  the  other  half  be  the  slave  of  something  which  will 
take  you  out  of  your  world,  into  the  general  life,  the  life  of 
thought,  of  man  as  a  whole,  of  the  universe.' 

The  counsel,  as  we  have  seen,  had  struck  root  and  flowered 
into  action.  So  many  men  of  Elsmere's  type  give  themselves 
up  once  and  for  all  as  they  become  mature  to  the  life  of  doing 
and  feeling,  practically  excluding  the  life  of  thought.  It  was 
Henry  Greys  influence  in  all  probability,  perhaps,  too,  the  train- 
ing of  an  earlier  Langham,  that  saved  for  Elsmere  the  life  of 
thought. 

The  form  taken  by  this  training  of  his  own  mind  lie  had  been 
thus  encouraged  not  to  abandon,  was,  as  we  know,  the  study  of 
history.  He  had  well  mapped  out  before  him  that  book  on  the 


276  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

origins  of  France  which  he  had  described  to  Langham.  It  wa$ 
to  take  him  years,  of  course,  and  meanwhile,  in  his  first  enthu- 
siasm, he  was  like  a  child,  revelling  in  the  treasure  of  work  that 
lay  before  him.  As  he  had  told  Langham,  he  had  just  got  below 
the  surface  of  a  great  subject  and  was  beginning  to  dig  into  the 
roots  of  it.  Hitherto  he  had  been  under  the  guidance  of  men  of 
his  own  day,  of  the  nineteenth  century  historian,  who  refashions 
the  past  on  the  lines  of  his  own  mind,  who  gives  it  rationality, 
coherence,  and,  as  it  were,  modernness,  so  that  the  main  im- 
pression he  produces  on  us,  so  long  as  we  look  at  that  past 
through  him  only,  is  on  the  whole  an  impression  of  continuity, 
of  resemblance. 

Whereas,  on  the  contrary,  the  first  impression  left  on  a  man 
by  the  attempt  to  plunge  into  the  materials  of  history  for  him- 
self is  almost  always  an  extraordinarily  sharp  impression  of 
difference,  of  contrast.  Ultimately,  of  course,  he  sees  that  these 
men  and  women  whose  letters  and  biographies,  whose  creeds  and 
general  conceptions  he  is  investigating,  are  in  truth  his  ancestors, 
bone  of  his  bone,  flesh  of  his  flesh.  But  at  first  the  student  who 
goes  back,  say,  in  the  history  of  Europe,  behind  the  Renaissance 
or  behind  the  Crusades  into  the  actual  deposits  of  the  past,  is 
often  struck  with  a  kind  of  vertige.  The  men  and  women  whom 
he  has  dragged  forth  into  the  light  of  his  own  mind  are  to  him 
like  some  strange  puppet-show.  They  are  called  by  names  he 
knows— kings,  bishops,  judges,  poets,  priests,  men  of  letters — 
but  what  a  gulf  between  him  and  them  !  What  motives,  what 
beliefs,  what  embryonic  processes  of  thought  and  mprals,  what 
bizarre  combinations  of  ignorance  and  knowledge,  of  the  highest 
sanctity  with  the  lowest  credulity  or  falsehood  ;  what  extraor- 
dinary prepossessions,  born  with  a  man  and  tainting  his  whole 
ways  of  seeing  and  thinking  from  childhood  to  the  grave ! 
Amid  all  the  intellectual  dislocation  of  the  spectacle,  indeed, 
he  perceives  certain  Greeks  and  certain  Latins  who  repre- 
sent a  forward  strain,  who  belong  as  it  seems  to  a  world  of 
their  own,  a  world  ahead  of  them.  To  them  he  stretches  out 
his  hand  :  '  You,'  he  says  to  them,  '  though  your  priests  spoke  to 
you  not  of  Christ,  but  of  Zeus  and  Artemis,  you  are  really  my 
kindred  ! '  But  intellectually  they  stand  alone.  Around  them, 
after  them,  for  long  ages  the  world  '  spake  as  a  child,  felt  as  a 
child,  understood  as  a  child.' 

Then  he  sees  what  it  is  makes  the  difference,  digs  the  gulf. 
' Science,'  the  mind  cries,  'ordered  knowledge.'  And  so  for  the 
first  time  the  modern  recognises  what  the  accumulations  of  his 
forefathers  have  done  for  him.  He  takes  the  torch  which  man 
has  been  so  long  and  patiently  fashioning  to  his  hand,  and  turns 
it  on  the  past,  and  at  every  step  the  sight  grows  stranger,  and 
yet  more  moving,  more  pathetic.  The  darkness  into  which  he 
penetrates  does  but  make  him  grasp  his  own  guiding  light  the 
more  closely.  And  yet,  bit  by  bit,  it  has  been  prepared  for  him 
by  these  groping  half  conscious  generations,  and  the  scrutiny 


CHAP,  xx  THE  SQUIRE  277 

which  began  in  repulsion  and  laughter  ends  in  a  marvelling 
gratitude. 

But  the  repulsion  and  the  laughter  come  first,  and  during 
this  winter  of  work  Elsmere  felt  them  both  very  strongly.  He 
would  sit  in  the  morning  buried  among  the  records  of  decaying 
Home  and  emerging  France,  surrounded  by  Chronicles,  by 
Church  Councils,  by  lives  of  the  Saints,  by  primitive  systems  of 
law,  pushing  his  imaginative  impetuous  way  through  them. 
Sometimes  Catherine  would  be  there,  and  he  would  pour  out  on 
her  something  of  what  was  in  his  own  mind. 

One  day  he  was  deep  in  the  life  of  a  certain  saint.  The  saint 
had  been  bishop  of  a  diocese  in  Southern  France.  His  bio- 
grapher was  his  successor  in  the  see,  a  man  of  high  political 
importance  in  the  Burgundian  state,  renowned  besides  for 
sanctity  and  learning.  Only  some  twenty  years  separated  the 
biography,  at  the  latest,  from  the  death  of  its  subject.  It  con- 
tained some  curious  material  for  social  history,  and  Robert  was 
reading  it  with  avidity.  But  it  was,  of  course,  a  tissue  of 
marvels.  The  young  bishop  had  practised  every  virtue  known 
to  the  time,  and  wrought  every  conceivable  miracle,  and  the 
miracles  were  better  told  than  usual,  with  more  ingenuity,  more 
imagination.  Perhaps  on  that  account  they  struck  the  reader's 
sense  more  sharply. 

'  And  the  saint  said  to  the  sorcerers  and  to  the  practisers  of 
unholy  arts,  that  they  should  do  those  evil  things  no  more,  for 
he  had  bound  the  spirits  of  whom  they  were  wont  to  inquire, 
and  they  would  get  no  further  answers  to  their  incantations. 
Then  those  stiff-necked  sons  of  the  devil  fell  upon  the  man  of 
God,  scourged  him  sore,  and  threatened  him  with  death,  if  he 
would  not  instantly  loose  those  spirits  he  had  bound.  And 
seeing  he  could  prevail  nothing,  and  being,  moreover,  admon- 
ished by  God  so  to  do,  he  permitted  them  to  work  their  own 
damnation.  For  he  called  for  a  parchment  and  wrote  upon  it, 
"  Ambrose  unto  Satan — Enter  I "  Then  was  the  spell  loosed,  the 
spirits  returned,  the  sorcerers  inquired  as  they  were  accustomed, 
and  received  answers.  But  in  a  short  space  of  time  every  one 
of  them  perished  miserably  and  was  delivered  unto  his  natural 
lord  Satanas,  whereunto  he  belonged.' 

Robert  made  a  hasty  exclamation,  and  turning  to  Catherine, 
who  was  working  beside  him,  read  the  passage  to  her,  with  a 
few  words  as  to  the  book  and  its  author. 

Catherine's  work  dropped  a  moment  on  to  her  knee. 

'  What  extraordinary  superstition  ! '  she  said,  startled.  '  A 
bishop,  Robert,  and  an  educated  man  ? ' 

Robert  nodded. 

'  But  it  is  the  whole  habit  of  mind,'  he  said  half  to  himself, 
staring  into  the  fire,  '  that  is  so  astounding.  No  one  escapes  it. 
The  whole  age  really  is  non-sane.' 

;  I  suppose  the  devout  Catholic  would  believe  that  ? ' 

'  I  am  not  sure,'  said  Robert  dreamily,  and  remained  sunk  in 


278  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

thought  for  long  after,  while  Catherine  worked,  and  pondered 
a  Christmas  entertainment  for  her  girls. 

Perhaps  it  was  his  scientific  work,  fragmentary  as  it  was,  that 
was  really  quickening  and  sharpening  these  historical  im- 
pressions of  his.  Evolution — once  a  mere  germ  in  the  mind — 
was  beginning  to  press,  to  encroach,  to  intermeddle  with  the 
mind's  other  furniture. 

And  the  comparative  instinct — that  tool,  par  excellence,  of 
modern  science — was  at  last  fully  awake,  was  growing  fast, 
taking  hold,  now  here,  now  there. 

'  It  is  tolerably  clear  to  me,'  he  said  to  himself  suddenly  one 
winter  afternoon,  as  he  was  trudging  home  alone  from  Mile 
End,  'that  some  day  or  other  I  must  set  to  work  to  bring  a 
little  order  into  one's  notions  of  the  Old  Testament.  At  present 
they  are  just  a  chaos  ! ' 

He  walked  on  a  while,  struggling  with  the  rainstorm  which 
had  overtaken  him,  till  again  the  mind's  quick  life  took  voice. 

'  But  what  matter  ?  God  in  the  beginning — God  in  the  pro- 
phets— in  Israel's  best  life — God  in  Christ !  How  are  any 
theories  about  the  Pentateuch  to  touch  that  ? ' 

And  into  the  clear  eyes,  the  young  face  aglow  with  wind  and 
rain,  there  leapt  a  light,  a  softness  indescribable. 

But  the  vivider  and  the  keener  grew  this  new  mental  life  of 
Elsmere's,  the  more  constant  became  his  sense  of  soreness  as  to 
that  foolish  and  motiveless  quarrel  which  divided  him  from  the 
squire.  Naturally  he  was  for  ever  being  harassed  and  pulled 
up  in  his  work  by  the  mere  loss  of  the  Murewell  library.  To 
have  such  a  collection  so  close,  and  to  be  cut  off  from  it,  was  a 
state  of  things  no  student  could  help  feeling  severely.  But  it 
was  much  more  than  that :  it  was  the  man  he  hankered  after  ; 
the  man  who  was  a  master  where  he  was  a  beginner  ;  the  man 
who  had  given  his  life  to  learning,  and  was  carrying  all  his  vast 
accumulations  sombrely  to  the  grave,  unused,  untransmitted. 

'He  might  have  given  me  his  knowledge,'  thought  Elsmere 
sadly, '  and  I — I — would  have  been  a  son  to  him.  Why  is  life  so 
perverse  ? ' 

Meanwhile  he  was  as  much  cut  off  from  the  great  house  and 
its  master  as  though  both  had  been  surrounded  by  the  thorn 
hedge  of  fairy  tale.  The  Hall  had  its  visitors  during  these 
winter  months,  but  the  Elsmeres  saw  nothing  of  them.  Robert 
gulped  down  a  natural  sigh  when  one  Saturday  evening,  as  he 
passed  the  Hall  gates,  he  saw  driving  through  them  the  chief  of 
English  science  side  by  side  with  the  most  accomplished  of 
English  critics. 

' "  There  are  good  times  in  the  world  and  I  ain't  in  'em  ! " '  he 
said  to  himself  with  a  laugh  and  a  shrug  as  he  turned  up  the 
lane  to  the  rectory,  and  then,  boy-like,  was  ashamed  of  himself, 
and  greeted  Catherine  with  all  the  tenderer  greeting. 

Only  on  two  occasions  during  three  months  could  he  be  sure 


CHAP,  xx  THE  SQUIRE  279 

of  having  seen  the  squire.  Both  were  in  the  twilight,  when,  as 
the  neighbourhood  declared,  Mr.  Wendover  always  walked,  and 
both  made  a  sharp  impression  on  the  rector's  nerves.  In  the  heart 
of  one  of  the  loneliest  commons  of  the  parish  Robert,  swinging 
along  one  November  evening  through  the  scattered  furze  bushes, 
growing  ghostly  in  the  darkness,  was  suddenly  conscious  of  a 
cloaked  figure  with  slouching  shoulders  and  head  bent  forward 
coming  towards  him.  It  passed  without  recognition  of  any  kind, 
and  for  an  instant  Eobert  caught  the  long  sharpened  features 
and  haughty  eyes  of  the  squire. 

At  another  time  Robert  was  walking,  far  from  home,  along  a 
bit  of  level  road.  The  pools  in  the  ruts  were  just  filmed  with 
frost,  and  gleamed  under  the  sunset ;  the  winter  dusk  was  clear 
and  chill.  A  horseman  turned  into  the  road  from  a  side  lane. 
It  was  the  squire  again,  alone.  The  sharp  sound  of  the 
approaching  hoofs  stirred  Robert's  pulse,  and  as  they  passed 
each  other  the  rector  raised  his  hat.  He  thought  his  greeting 
was  acknowledged,  but  could  not  be  quite  sure.  From  the 
shelter  of  a  group  of  trees  he  stood  a  moment  and  looked  after 
the  retreating  figure.  It  and  the  horse  showed  dark  against  a 
wide  sky  barred  by  stormy  reds  and  purples.  The  wind  whistled 
through  the  withered  oaks ;  the  long  road  with  its  lines  of 
glimmering  pools  seemed  to  stretch  endlessly  into  the  sunset ; 
and  with  every  minute  the  night  strode  on.  Age  and  loneliness 
could  have  found  no  fitter  setting.  A  shiver  ran  through 
Elsmere  as  he  stepped  forward. 

Undoubtedly  the  quarrel,  helped  by  his  work,  and  the 
perpetual  presence  of  that  beautiful  house  commanding  the 
whole  country  round  it  from  its  plateau  above  the  river,  kept 
Elsmere  specially  in  mind  of  the  squire.  As  before  their  first 
meeting,  and  in  spite  of  it,  he  became  more  and  more  imagin- 
atively preoccupied  with  him.  One  of  the  signs  of  it  was 
a  strong  desire  to  read  the  squire's  two  famous  books :  one, 
The  Idols  of  the  Market  -place,  an  attack  on  English  beliefs  ; 
the  other,  Essays  on  English  Culture,  an  attack  on  English 
ideals  of  education.  He  had  never  come  across  them  as  it 
happened,  and  perhaps  Newcome's  denunciation  had  some 
effect  in  inducing  him  for  a  time  to  refrain  from  reading  them. 
But  in  December  he  ordered  them  and  waited  their  coming  with 
impatience.  He  said  nothing  of  the  order  to  Catherine  ;  some- 
how there  were  by  now  two  or  three  portions  of  his  work,  two 
or  three  branches  of  his  thought,  which  had  fallen  out  of  their 
common  discussion.  After  all  she  was  no^  literary,  and  with 
all  their  oneness  of  soul  there  could  not  be  an  identity  of  interests 
or  pursuits. 

The  books  arrived  in  the  morning.  (Oh,  how  dismally  well, 
with  what  a  tightening  of  the  heart,  did  Robert  always 
remember  that  day  in  after  years  ! )  He  was  much  too  busy  to 
look  at  them,  and  went  off  to  a  meeting.  In  the  evening, 
coming  home  late  from  his  night-school,  he  found  Catherine 


280  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

tired,  sent  her  to  bed,  and  went  himself  into  his  study  to  put 
together  some  notes  for  a  cottage  lecture  he  was  to  give  the 
following  day.  The  packet  of  books,  unopened,  lay  on  his 
writing-table.  He  took  off  the  wrapper,  and  in  his  eager  way 
fell  to  reading  the  first  he  touched. 

It  was  the  first  volume  of  The,  Idols  of  the  Market-place. 

Ten  or  twelve  years  before,  Mr.  Wendover  had  launched  this 
book  into  a  startled  and  protesting  England.  It  had  been  the 
fruit  of  his  first  renewal  of  contact  with  English  life  and 
English  ideas  after  his  return  from  Berlin.  Fresh  from  the 
speculative  ferment  of  Germany  and  the  far  profaner  scepticism 
of  France;  he  had  returned  to  a  society  where  the  first  chapter 
of  Genesis  and  the  theory  of  verbal  inspiration  were  still 
regarded  as  valid  and  important  counters  on  the  board  of 
thought.  The  result  had  been  this  book.  In  it  each  stronghold 
of  English  popular  religion  had  been  assailed  in  turn,  at  a  time 
when  English  orthodoxy  was  a  far  more  formidable  thing  than 
it  is  now. 

The  Pentateuch,  the  Prophets,  the  Gospels,  St.  Paul, 
Tradition,  the  Fathers,  Protestantism  and  Justification  by  Faith, 
the  Eighteenth  Century,  the  Broad  Church  Movement, 
Anglican  Theology  —  the  squire  had  his  say  about  them  all. 
And  while  the  coolness  ana  frankness  of  the  method  sent  a 
shock  of  indignation  and  horror  through  the  religious  public, 
the  subtle  and  caustic  style,  and  the  epigrams  with  which  the 
book  was  strewn,  forced  both  the  religious  and  irreligious  public 
to  read,  whether  they  would  or  no.  A  storm  of  controversy 
rose  round  the  volumes,  and  some  of  the  keenest  observers  of 
English  life  had  said  at  the  time,  and  maintained  since,  that 
the  publication  of  the  book  had  made  or  marked  an  epoch. 

Robert  had  lit  on  those  pages  in  the  Essay  on  the  Gospels  where 
the  squire  fell  to  analysing  the  evidence  for  the  Resurrection, 
following  up  his  analysis  by  an  attempt  at  reconstructing  the 
conditions  out  of  which  the  belief  in  '  the  legend  '  arose.  Robert 
began  to  read  vaguely  at  first,  then  to  hurry  on  through  page 
after  page,  still  standing,  seized  at  once  by  the  bizarre  power  of 
the  style,  the  audacity  and  range  of  the  treatment. 

Not  a  sound  in  the  house.  Outside,  the  tossing  moaning 
December  night ;  inside,  the  faintly  crackling  fire,  the  standing 
figure.  Suddenly  it  was  to  Robert  as  though  a  cruel  torturing 
hand  were  laid  upon  his  inmost  being.  His  breath  failed  him  ; 
the  book  slipped  out  of  his  grasp  ;  he  sank  down  upon  his  chair, 
his  head  in  his  hands.  Oh,  what  a  desolate  intolerable 
moment !  Over  the  young  idealist  soul  there  swept  a  dry 
destroying  whirlwind  of  thought.  Elements  gathered  from  all 
sources — from  his  own  historical  work,  from  the  squire's  book, 
from  the  secret  half -conscious  recesses  of  the  mind — entered 
into  it,  and  as  it  passed  it  seemed  to  scorch  the  heart. 

He  stayed  bowed  there  a  while,  then  he  roused  himself  with 
a  half -groan,  and  hastily  extinguishing  his  lamp  he  groped  his 


CHAP,  xxi  THE  SQUIRE  281 

way  upstairs  to  his  wife's  room.  Catherine  lay  asleep.  The 
child,  lost  among  its  white  coverings,  slept  too  :  there  was  a  dim 
light  over  the  bed,  the  books,  the  pictures.  Beside  his  wife's 
pillow  was  a  table  on  which  there  lay  open  her  little  Testament 
and  the  Imitation  her  father  had  given  her.  Elsmere  sank 
down  beside  her,  appalled  by  the  contrast  between  this  soft 
religious  peace  and  that  black  agony  of  doubt  which  still  over- 
shadowed him.  He  knelt  there,  restraining  his  breath  lest  it 
should  wake  her,  wrestling  piteously  with  himself,  crying  for 
pardon,  for  faith,  feeling  himself  utterly  unworthy  to  touch 
even  the  dear  hand  that  lay  so  near  him.  But  gradually  the 
traditional  forces  of  his  life  reasserted  themselves.  The  horror 
lifted.  Prayer  brought  comfort  and  a  passionate  healing 
self-abasement.  'Master,  forgive  —  defend  —  purify,'  cried 
the  aching  heart.  '  There  is  none  other  that  fighteth  for  us,  but 
only  Thou,  0  God!' 

He  did  not  open  the  book  again.  Next  morning  he  put  it 
back  into  his  shelves.  If  there  were  any  Christian  who  could 
affront  such  an  antagonist  with  a  light  heart,  he  felt  with  a 
shudder  of  memory  it  was  not  he. 

'  I  have  neither  learning  nor  experience  enough — yet,'  he  said 
to  himself  slowly  as  he  moved  away,  '  of  course  it  can  be  met, 
but  /  must  grow,  must  think — first.' 

And  of  that  night's  wrestle  he  said  not  a  word  to  any  living 
soul.  He  did  penance  for  it  in  the  tenderest,  most  secret  ways, 
but  he  shrank  in  misery  from  the  thought  of  revealing  it  even 
to  Catherine. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

MEANWHILE  the  poor  poisoned  folk  at  Mile  End  lived  and 
apparently  throve,  in  defiance  of  all  the  laws  of  the  universe. 
Robert,  as  soon  as  he  found  that  radical  measures  were  for  the 
time  hopeless,  had  applied  himself  with  redoubled  energy  to 
making  the  people  use  such  palliatives  as  were  within  their 
reach,  and  had  preached  boiled  water  and  the  removal  of  filth 
till,  as  he  declared  to  Catherine,  his  dreams  were  one  long 
sanitary  nightmare.  But  he  was  not  confiding  enough  to  believe 
that  the  people  paid  much  heed,  and  he  hoped  more  from  a  dry 
hard  winter  than  from  any  exertion  either  of  his  or  theirs. 

But,  alas  !  with  the  end  of  November  a  season  of  furious  rain 
set  in. 

Then  Robert  began  to  watch  Mile  End  with  anxiety,  for  so 
far  every  outbreak  of  illness  there  had  followed  upon  unusual 
damp.  But  the  rains  passed,  leaving  behind  them  no  worse 
results  than  the  usual  winter  crop  of  lung  ailments  and 
rheumatism,  and  he  breathed  again. 

Christmas  came  and  went,  and  with  the  end  of  December  the 


282  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  m 

wet  weather  returned.  Day  after  day  rolling  masses  of  south- 
west cloud  came  up  from  the  Atlantic  and  wrapped  the  whole 
country  in  rain,  which  reminded  Catherine  of  her  Westmoreland 
rain  more  than  any  she  had  yet  seen  in  the  South.  Robert 
accused  her  of  liking  it  for  that  reason,  but  she  shook  her  head 
with  a  sigh,  declaring  that  it  was  '  nothing  without  the  becks.' 

One  afternoon  she  was  shutting  the  door  of  the  school  behind 
her,  and  stepping  out  on  the  road  skirting  the  green — the 
bedabbled  wintry  green — when  she  saw  Robert  emerging  from 
the  Mile  End  lane.  She  crossed  over  to  him,  wondering  as  she 
neared  Mm  that  he  seemed  to  take  no  notice  of  her.  He  was 
striding  along,  his  wideawake  over  his  eyes,  and  so  absorbed  that 
she  had  almost  touched  him  before  he  saw  her. 

'  Darling,  is  that  you  ?  Don't  stop  me,  I  am  going  to  take 
the  pony-carriage  in  for  Meyrick.  I  have  just  come  back  from 
that  accursed  place ;  three  cases  of  diphtheria  in  one  house, 
Sharland's  wife — and  two  others  down  with  fever.' 

She  made  a  horrified  exclamation. 

'  It  will  spread,'  he  said  gloomily,  '  I  know  it  will.  I  never 
saw  the  children  look  such  a  ghastly  crew  before.  Well,  I  must 

to  for  Meyrick  and  a  nurse,  and  we  must  isolate  and  make  a 
ght  for  it.' 

In  a  few  days  the  diphtheria  epidemic  in  the  hamlet  had 
reached  terrible  proportions.  There  had  been  one  death,  others 
were  expected,  and  soon  Robert  in  his  brief  hours  at  home 
could  find  no  relief  in  anything,  so  heavy  was  the  oppression  of 
the  day's  memories.  At  first  Catherine  for  the  child  s  sake  kept 
away;  but  the  little  Mary  was  weaned,  had  a  good  Scotch 
nurse,  was  in  every  way  thriving,  and  after  a  day  or  two 
Catherine's  craving  to  help,  to  be  with  Robert  in  his  trouble, 
was  too  strong  to  be  withstood.  But  she  dared  not  go  back- 
wards and  forwards  between  her  baby  and  the  diphtheritic 
children.  So  she  bethought  herself  of  Mrs.  Elsmere's  servant, 
old  Martha,  who  was  still  inhabiting  Mrs.  Elsmere's  cottage  till 
a  tenant  could  be  found  for  it,  and  doing  good  service  mean- 
while as  an  occasional  parish  nurse.  The  baby  and  its  nurse 
went  over  to  the  cottage.  Catherine  carried  the  child  there, 
wrapped  close  in  maternal  arms,  and  leaving  her  on  old 
Martha's  lap,  went  back  to  Robert. 

Then  she  and  he  devoted  themselves  to  a  hand-to-hand  fight 
with  the  epidemic.  At  the  climax  of  it  there  were  about  twenty 
children  down  with  it  in  different  stages,  and  seven  cases  of 
fever.  They  had  two  hospital  nurses ;  one  of  the  better  cot- 
tages, turned  into  a  sanatorium,  accommodated  the  worst  cases 
under  the  nurses,  and  Robert  and  Catherine,  directed  by  them 
and  the  doctors,  took  the  responsibility  of  the  rest,  he  helping 
to  nurse  the  boys  and  she  the  girls.  Of  the  fever  cases  Shar- 
land's wife  was  the  worst.  A  feeble  creature  at  all  times,  it 
seemed  almost  impossible  she  could  weather  through.  But  day 
after  day  passed,  and  by  dint  of  incessant  nursing  she  still 


CHAP,  xxi  THE  SQUIRE  283 

lived.  A  youth  of  twenty,  the  main  support  of  a  mother  and 
five  or  six  younger  children,  was  also  desperately  ill.  Robert 
hardly  ever  had  him  out  of  his  thoughts,  and  the  boy's  dog-like 
affection  for  the  rector,  struggling  with  his  deathly  weakness, 
was  like  a  perpetual  exemplification  of  Ahriman  and  Ormuzd — 
the  power  of  life  struggling  with  the  power  of  death. 

It  was  a  fierce  fight.  Presently  it  seemed  to  the  husband 
and  wife  as  though  the  few  daily  hours  spent  at  the  rectory 
were  mere  halts  between  successive  acts  of  battle  with  the 
plague-fiend — a  more  real  and  grim  Grendel  of  the  Marshes — 
for  the  lives  of  children.  Catherine  could  always  sleep  in  these 
intervals,  quietly  and  dreamlessly;  Robert  very  soon  could 
only  sleep  by  the  help  of  some  prescription  of  old  Meyrick's. 
On  all  occasions  of  strain  since  his  boyhood  there  had  been 
signs  in  him  of  a  certain  lack  of  constitutional  hardness  which 
his  mother  knew  very  well,  but  which  his  wife  was  only  just 
beginning  to  recognise.  However,  he  laughed  to  scorn  any 
attempt  to  restrain  his  constant  goings  and  comings,  or  those 
hours  of  night-nursing,  in  which,  as  the  hospital  nurses  were 
the  first  to  admit,  no  one  was  so  successful  as  the  rector.  And 
when  he  stood  up  on  Sundays  to  preach  in  Murewell  Church, 
the  worn  and  spiritual  look  of  the  man,  and  the  knowledge 
warm  at  each  heart  of  those  before  him  of  how  the  rector  not 
only  talked  but  lived,  carried  every  word  home. 

This  strain  upon  all  the  moral  and  physical  forces,  however, 
strangely  enough,  came  to  Robert  as  a  kind  of  relief.  It  broke 
through  a  tension  of  brain  which  of  late  had  become  an  oppres- 
sion. And  for  both  him  and  Catherine  these  dark  times  had 
moments  of  intensest  joy,  points  of  white  light  illuminating 
heaven  and  earth.  There  were  cloudy  nights — wet,  stormy 
January  nights — when  sometimes  it  happened  to  them  to  come 
back  both  together  from  the  hamlet,  Robert  carrying  a  lantern, 
Catherine  clothed  in  waterproof  from  head  to  foot,  walking 
beside  him,  the  rays  flashing  now  on  her  face,  now  on  the 
wooded  sides  of  the  lane,  while  the  wind  howled  through  the 
dark  vault  of  branches  overhead.  A^d  then,  as  they  talked  or 
were  silent,  suddenly  a  sense  of  the  intense  blessedness  of  this 
comradeship  of  theirs  would  rise  like  a  flood  in  the  man's  heart, 
and  he  would  fling  his  free  arm  round  her,  forcing  her  to  stand 
a  moment  in  the  January  night  and  storm  while  he  said  to  her 
words  of  passionate  gratitude,  of  faith  in  an  immortal  union 
reaching  beyond  change  or  death,  lost  in  a  kiss  which  was  a 
sacrament.  Then  there  were  the  moments  when  they  saw  their 
child,  held  high  in  Martha's  arms  at  the  window,  and  leaping 
towards  her  mother ;  the  moments  when  one  pallia  sickly  being 
after  another  was  pronounced  out  of  danger ;  and  by  the  help 
of  them  the  weeks  passed  away. 

Nor  were  they  left  without  help  from  outside.  Lady  Helen 
Varley  no  sooner  heard  the  news  than  she  hurried  over.  Robert, 
on  his  way  one  morning  from  one  cottage  to  another,  saw  her 


284  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  HI 

pony-carriage  in  the  lane.  He  hastened  up  to  her  before  she 
could  dismount. 

'No,  Lady  Helen,  you  mustn't  come  here,'  he  said  to  her 
peremptorily,  as  she  held  out  her  hand. 

'Oh,  Mr.  Elsmere,  let  me.  My  boy  is  in  town  with  his 
grandmother.  Let  me  just  go  through,  at  any  rate,  and  see 
what  I  can  send  you.' 

Robert  shook  his  head,  smiling.  A  common  friend  of  theirs 
and  hers  had  once  described  this  little  lady  to  Elsmere  by  a 
French  sentence  which  originally  applied  to  the  Duchesse  de 
Choiseul.  'Une  charmante  petite  fe"e  sortie  d'un  ceuf  enchante !' 
— so  it  ran.  Certainly,  as  Elsmere  looked  down  upon  her  now, 
fresh  from  those  squalid  death-stricken  hovels  behind  him,  he 
was  brought  more  abruptly  than  ever  upon  the  contrasts  of 
life.  Lady  Helen  wore  a  green  velvet  and  fur  mantle,  in  the 
production  of  which  even  Worth  had  felt  some  pride ;  a  little 
green  velvet  bonnet  perched  on  her  fair  hair ;  one  tiny  hand, 
ungloved,  seemed  ablaze  with  diamonds  ;  there  were  opals  and 
diamonds  somewhere  at  her  throat,  gleaming  among  her  sables. 
But  she  wore  her  jewels  as  carelessly  as  she  wore  her  high  birth, 
her  quaint  irregular  prettiness,  or  the  one  or  two  brilliant 
gifts  which  made  her  sought  after  wherever  she  went.  She 
loved  her  opals  as  she  loved  all  bright  things  ;  if  it  pleased  her 
to  wear  them  in  the  morning,  she  wore  them ;  and  in  five 
minutes  she  was  capable  of  making  the  sourest  puritan  forget 
to  frown  on  her  and  them.  To  Robert  she  always  seemed  the 
quintessence  of  breeding,  of  aristocracy  at  their  best.  All  her 
freaks,  her  sallies,  her  absurdities  even,  were  graceful.  At  her 
freest  and  gayest  there  were  things  in  her — restraints,  reti- 
cences, perceptions — which  implied  behind  her  generations  of 
rich,  happy,  important  people,  with  ample  leisure  to  cultivate 
all  the  more  delicate  niceties  of  social  feeling  and  relation. 
Robert  was  often  struck  by  the  curious  differences  between  her 
and  Rose.  Rose  was  far  the  handsomer ;  she  was  at  least  as 
clever ;  and  she  had  a  strong  imperious  will  where  Lady  Helen 
had  only  impulses  and  sympathies  and  engouements.  But  Rose 
belonged  to  the  class  which  struggles,  where  each  individual 
depends  on  himself  and  knows  it.  Lady  Helen  had  never 
struggled  for  anything — all  the  best  things  of  the  world  were 
hers  so  easily  that  she  hardly  gave  them  a  thought ;  or  rather, 
what  she  had  gathered  without  pain  she  held  so  lightly,  she 
dispensed  so  lavishly,  that  men's  eyes  followed  her,  fluttering 
through  life,  with  much  the  same  feeling  as  was  struck  from 
Clough's  radical  hero  by  the  peerless  Lady  Maria — 

'  Live,  be  lovely,  forget  us,  be  beautiful,  even  to  proudness, 
Even  for  their  poor  sakes  whose  happiness  is  to  behold  you  ; 
Live,  be  uncaring,  be  joyous,  be  sumptuous  ;  only  be  lovely ! ' 

'Uncaring,'  however,  little  Lady  Helen  never  was.     If  she 


CHAP.  XXT  THE  SQUIRE  285 

was  a  fairy,  she  was  a  fairy  4M.  heart,  all  frank  foolish  smiles 
and  tears. 

'  No,  Lady  Helen — no;'  Robert  said  again.  '  This  is  no  place 
for  you,  and  we  are  getting  on  capitally. 

She  pouted  a  little. 

'I  believe  you  and  Mrs.  Elsmere  are  just  killing  yourselves 
all  in  a  corner,  with  no  one  to  see,'  she  said  indignantly.  '  If 
you  won't  let  me  see,  I  shall  send  Sir  Harry.  But  who ' — and 
her  brown  fawn's  eyes  ran  startled  over  the  cottages  before  her 
— '  who,  Mr.  Elsmere,  does  this  dreadful  place  belong  to  ? ' 

'  Mr.  Wendover,'  said  Robert  shortly. 

'  Impossible  ! '  she  cried  incredulously.  '  Why,  I  wouldn't 
ask  one  of  my  dogs  to  sleep  there,'  and  she  pointed  to  the 
nearest  hovel,  whereof  the  walls  were  tottering  outwards,  the 
thatch  was  falling  to  pieces,  and  the  windows  were  mended 
with  anything  that  came  handy — rags,  paper,  or  the  crown  of 
an  old  hat. 

'  No,  you  would  be  ill  advised,'  said  Robert,  looking  with  a 
bitter  little  smile  at  the  sleek  dachshund  that  sat  blinking 
beside  its  mistress. 

'  But  what  is  the  agent  about  t' 

Then  Robert  told  her  the  story,  not  mincing  his  words. 
Since  the  epidemic  had  begun,  all  that  sense  of  imaginative 
attraction  which  had  been  reviving  in  him  towards  the  squire 
had  been  simply  blotted  out  by  a  fierce  heat  of  indignation. 
When  he  thought  of  Mr.  Wendover  now,  he  thought  of  him  as 
the  man  to  whom  in  strict  truth  it  was  owing  that  helpless 
children  died  in  choking  torture.  All  that  agony  of  wrath  and 
pity  he  had  gone  through  in  the  last  ten  days  sprang  to  his  lips 
now  as  he  talked  to  Lady  Helen,  and  poured  itself  into  his 
words. 

'  Old  Meyrick  and  I  have  taken  things  into  our  own  hands 
now,'  he  said  at  last  briefly.  '  We  have  already  made  two  cot- 
tages fairly  habitable.  To-morrow  the  inspector  comes.  I  told 
the  people  yesterday  I  wouldn't  be  bound  by  my  promise  a  day 
longer.  He  must  put  the  screw  on  Henslowe,  and*  if  Henslowe 
dawdles,  why  we  shall  just  drain  and  repair  and  sink  for  a  well 
ourselves.  I  can  find  the  money  somehow.  At  present  we  get 
all  our  water  from  one  of  the  farms  on  the  brow.' 

'  Money  ! '  said  Lady  Helen  impulsively,  her  looks  warm  with 
sympathy  for  the  pale  harassed  young  rector.  '  Sir  Harry  shall 
send  you  as  much  as  you  want.  And  anything  else — blankets 
—coals?' 

Out  came  her  note-book,  and  Robert  was  drawn  into  a  list. 
Then,  full  of  joy  fulness  at  being  allowed  to  help,  she  gathered 
up  her  reins,  she  nodded  her  pretty  little  head  at  him,  and  was 
rust  starting  off  her  ponies  at  full  speed,  equally  eager  '  to  tell 
Harry '  and  to  ransack  Churton  for  the  stores  required,  when  it 
occurred  to  her  to  pull  up  again. 

'Oh,  Mr.  Elsmere,  my  aunt,  Lady  Charlotte,  does  nothing 


286  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

but  talk  about  your  sister-in-law.  Why  did  you  keep  her  all  to 
yourself  ?  Is  it  kind,  is  it  neighbourly,  to  have  such  a  wonder 
to  stay  with  you  and  let  nobody  share  ? ' 

'  A  wonder  ? '  said  Robert,  amused.  '  Rose  plays  the  violin 
very  well,  but ' 

'  As  if  relations  ever  saw  one  in  proper  perspective ! '  exclaimed 
Lady  Helen.  'My  aunt  wants  to  be  allowed  to  have  her  in 
town  next  season  if  you  will  all  let  her.  I  think  she  would  find 
it  fun.  Aunt  Charlotte  knows  all  the  world  and  his  wife.  And 
if  I'm  there,  and  Miss  Leyburn  will  let  me  make  friends  with 
her,  why,  you  know,  /  can  just  protect  her  a  little  from  Aunt 
Charlotte ! ' 

The  little  laughing  face  bent  forward  again  ;  Robert,  smiling, 
raised  his  hat,  and  the  ponies  whirled  her  off.  In  anybody  else 
Elsmere  would  have  thought  all  this  effusion  insincere  or  patron- 
ising. But  Lady  Helen  was  the  most  spontaneous  of  mortals, 
and  the  only  high-born  woman  he  had  ever  met  who  was  really, 
and  not  only  apparently,  free  from  the  'nonsense  of  rank.' 
Robert  shrewdly  suspected  Lady  Charlotte's  social  tolerance  to 
be  a  mere  varnish.  But  this  little  person,  and  her  favourite 
brother  Hugh,  to  judge  from  the  accounts  of  him,  must  always 
have  found  life  too  romantic,  too  wildly  and  delightfully  inter- 
esting from  top  to  bottom,  to  be  measured  by  any  but  romantic 
standards. 

Next  day  Sir  Harry  Varley,  a  great  burly  country  squire,  who 
adored  his  wife,  kept  the  hounds,  owned  a  model  estate,  and 
thanked  God  every  morning  that  he  was  an  Englishman,  rode 
over  to  Mile  End.  Robert,  who  had  just  been  round  the  place 
with  the  inspector  and  was  dead  tired,  had  only  energy  to  show 
him  a  few  of  the  worst  enormities.  Sir  Harry,  leaving  a  cheque 
behind  him,  rode  off  with  a  discharge  of  strong  language,  at 
which  Robert,  clergyman  as  he  was,  only  grimly  smiled. 

A  few  days  later  Mr.  Wendover's  crimes  as  a  landowner,  his 
agent's  brutality,  young  Elsmere's  devotion,  and  the  horrors  of 
the  Mile  End  outbreak,  were  in  everybody's  mouths.  The 
county  was  roused.  The  Radical  newspaper  came  out  on  the 
Saturday  with  a  flaming  article ;  Robert,  much  to  his  annoy- 
ance, found  himself  the  local  hero  ;  and  money  began  to  come 
in  to  him  freely. 

On  the  Monday  morning  Henslowe  appeared  on  the  scene 
with  an  army  of  workmen.  A  racy  communication  from  the 
inspector  had  reached  him  two  days  before,  so  had  a  copy  of  the 
Churton  Advertiser.  He  had  spent  Sunday  in  a  drinking  bout, 
turning  over  all  possible  plans  of  vengeance  and  evasion. 
Towards  the  evening,  however,  his  wife,  a  gaunt  clever  Scotch- 
woman, who  saw  ruin  before  them,  and  had  on  occasion  an  even 
sharper  tongue  than  her  husband,  managed  to  capture  the 
supplies  of  brandy  in  the  house  and  effectually  conceal  them. 
Then  she  waited  for  the  moment  of  collapse  which  came  on 
towards  morning,  and  with  her  hands  on  her  hips  she  poured 


CHAP,  xxi  THE  SQUIRE  287 

into  him  a  volley  of  home-truths  which  not  even  Sir  Harry 
Varley  could  have  bettered.  Henslowe's  nerve  gave  way.  He 
went  out  at  daybreak,  white  and  sullen,  to  look  for  workmen. 

Robert,  standing  on  the  step  of  a  cottage,  watched  him  give 
his  orders,  and  took  vigilant  note  of  their  substance.  They 
embodied  the  inspector's  directions,  and  the  rector  was  satisfied. 
Henslowe  was  obliged  to  pass  him  on  his  way  to  another  group 
of  houses.  At  first  he  affected  not  to  see  the  rector,  then  sud- 
denly Elsmere  was  conscious  that  the  man's  bloodshot  eyes  were 
on  him.  Such  a  look  !  If  hate  could  have  killed,  Elsmere 
would  have  fallen  where  he  stood.  Yet  the  man's  hand  me- 
chanically moved  to  his  hat,  as  though  the  spell  of  his  wife's 
harangue  were  still  potent  over  his  shaking  muscles. 

Robert  took  no  notice  whatever  of  the  salutation.  He  stood 
calmly  watching  till  Henslowe  disappeared  into  the  last  house. 
Then  he  called  one  of  the  agent's  train,  heard  what  was  to  be 
done,  gave  a  sharp  nod  of  assent,  and  turned  on  his  heel.  So 
far  so  good  :  the  servant  had  been  made  to  feel,  but  he  wished 
it  had  been  the  master.  Oh,  those  three  little  emaciated 
creatures  whose  eyes  he  had  closed,  whose  clammy  hands  he  had 
held  to  the  last! — what  reckoning  should  be  asked  for  their 
undeserved  torments  when  the  Great  Account  came  to  be 
made  up  ? 

Meanwhile  not  a  sound  apparently  of  all  this  reached  the 
squire  in  the  sublime  solitude  of  Murewell.  A  fortnight  had 
passed.  Henslowe  had  been  conquered,  the  county  had  rushed 
to  Elsmere's  help,  and  neither  he  nor  Mrs.  Darcy  had  made  a 
sign.  Their  life  was  so  abnormal  that  it  was  perfectly  possible 
they  had  heard  nothing.  Elsmere  wondered  when  they  would 
hear. 

The  rector's  chief  help  and  support  all  through  had  been  old 
Meyrick.  The  parish  doctor  had  been  in  bed  with  rheumatism 
when  the  epidemic  broke  out,  and  Robert,  feeling  it  a  comfort 
to  be  rid  of  him,  had  thrown  the  whole  business  into  the  hands 
of  Meyrick  and  his  son.  This  son  was  nominally  his  father's 
junior  partner,  but  as  he  was,  besides,  a  young  and  brilliant 
M.D.  fresh  from  a  great  hospital,  and  his  father  was  just  a  poor 
old  general  practitioner,  with  the  barest  qualification,  and  only 
forty  years'  experience  to  recommend  him,  it  will  easily  be 
imagined  that  the  subordination  was  purely  nominal.  Indeed 
young  Meyrick  was  fast  ousting  his  father  in  all  directions,  and 
the  neighbourhood,  which  had  so  far  found  itself  unable  either 
to  enter  or  to  quit  this  mortal  scene  without  old  Mey rick's 
assistance,  was  beginning  to  send  notes  to  the  house  in  Churton 
High  Street,  whereon  the  superscription  '  Dr.  Edivard  Meyrick ' 
was  underlined  with  ungrateful  emphasis.  The  father  took 
his  deposition  very  quietly.  Only  on  Murewell  Hall  would  he 
allow  no  trespassing,  and  so  long  as  his  son  left  him  undisturbed 
there,  he  took  his  effacement  in  other  quarters  with  perfect 
meekness. 


288  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  m 

Young  Elsmere's  behaviour  to  him,  however,  at  a  time  when 
all  the  rest  of  the  Churton  world  was  beginning  to  hold  him 
cheap  and  let  him  see  it,  had  touched  the  old  man's  heart,  and 
he  was  the  rector's  slave  in  this  Mile  End  business.  Edward 
Meyrick  would  come  whirling  in  and  out  of  the  hamlet  once  a 
day.  Robert  was  seldom  sorry  to  see  the  back  of  him.  His 
attainments,  of  course,  were  useful,  but  his  cocksureness  was 
irritating,  and  his  manner  to  his  father  abominable.  The 
father,  on  the  other  hand,  came  over  in  the  shabby  pony-cart 
he  had  driven  for  the  last  forty  years,  and  having  himself  no 
press  of  business,  would  spend  hours  with  the  rector  over  the 
cases,  giving  them  an  infinity  of  patient  watching,  and  amusing 
Robert  by  the  cautious  hostility  he  would  allow  himself  every 
now  and  then  towards  his  son's  new-fangled  devices. 

At  first  Meyrick  showed  himself  fidgety  as  to  the  squire. 
Had  he  been  seen,  been  heard  from  ?  He  received  Robert's 
sharp  negatives  with  long  sighs,  but  Robert  clearly  saw  that, 
like  the  rest  of  the  world,  he  was  too  much  afraid  of  Mr.  Wend- 
over  to  go  and  beard  him.  Some  months  before,  as  it  happened, 
Elsmere  had  told  him  the  story  of  his  encounter  with  the  squire, 
and  had  been  a  good  deal  moved  and  surprised  by  the  old  man's 
concern. 

One  day,  about  three  weeks  from  the  beginning  of  the  out- 
break, when  the  state  of  things  in  the  hamlet  was  beginning 
decidedly  to  mend,  Meyrick  arrived  for  his  morning  round, 
much  preoccupied.  He  hurried  his  work  a  little,  and  after  it 
was  done  asked  Robert  to  walk  up  the  road  with  him. 

'  I  have  seen  the  squire,  sir,'  he  said,  turning  on  his  companion 
with  a  certain  excitement. 

Robert  flushed. 

'  Have  you  ? '  he  replied  with  his  hands  behind  him,  and  a 
world  of  expression  in  his  sarcastic  voice. 

'You  misjudge  him  !  You  misjudge  him,  Mr.  Elsmere  ! '  the 
old  man  said  tremulously.  '  I  told  you  he  could  know  nothing 
of  this  business — and  he  didn't !  He  has  been  in  town  part  of 
the  time,  and  down  here — how  is  he  to  know  anything?  He 
sees  nobody.  That  man  Henslowe,  sir,  must  be  a  real  bad 
fellow.' 

'Don't  abuse  the  man,'  said  Robert,  looking  up.  'It's  not 
worth  while,  when  you  can  say  your  mind  of  the  master.' 

Old  Meyrick  sighed. 

'WelL'  said  Robert,  after  a  moment,  his  lip  drawn  and 
quivering,  '  you  told  him  the  story,  I  suppose  ?  Seven  deaths, 
is  it,  by  now  1  Well,  what  sort  of  impression  did  these  unfor- 
tunate accidents ' — and  he  smiled — '  produce  ? ' 

'  He  talked  of  sending  money,'  said  Meyrick  doubtfully  •  '  lie 
said  he  would  have  Henslowe  up  and  inquire.  He  seemed  put 
about  and  annoyed.  Oh,  Mr.  Elsmere,  you  think  too  hardly  of 
the  squire,  that  you  do  ! ' 

They  strolled  on  together  in  silence.     Robert  was  not  inclined 


CHAP,  xxi  THE  SQUIRE  289 

to  discuss  the  matter.  But  old  Meyrick  seemed  to  be  labouring 
under  some  suppressed  emotion,  and  presently  he  began  upon 
his  own  experiences  as  a  doctor  of  the  Wendover  family.  He 
had  already  broached  the  subject  more  or  less  vaguely  with 
Robert.  Now,  however,  he  threw  his  medical  reserve,  generally 
his  strongest  characteristic,  to  the  winds.  He  insisted,  on  telling 
his  companion,  who  listened  reluctantly,  the  whole  miserable 
and  ghastly  story  of  the  old  squire's  suicide.  He  described  the 
heir's  summons,  his  arrival  just  in  time  for  the  last  scene  with 
all  its  horrors,  and  that  mysterious  condition  of  the  squire  for 
some  months  afterwards,  when  no  one,  not  even  Mrs.  Darcy,  had 
been  admitted  to  the  Hall,  and  old  Meyrick,  directed  at  inter- 
vals by  a  great  London  doctor,  had  been  the  only  spectator  of 
Roger  Wendover's  physical  and  mental  breakdown,  the  only 
witness  of  that  dark  consciousness  of  inherited  fatality  which 
at  that  period  of  his  life  not  even  the  squire's  iron  will  had  been 
able  wholly  to  conceal. 

Robert,  whose  attention  was  inevitably  roused  after  a  while, 
found  himself  with  some  curiosity  realising  the  squire  from 
another  man's  totally  different  point  of  view.  Evidently  Mey- 
rick had  seen  him  at  such  moments  as  wring  from  the  harshest 
nature  whatever  grains  of  tenderness,  of  pity,  or  of  natural 
human  weakness  may  be  in  it.  And  it  was  clear,  too,  that  the 
squire,  conscious  perhaps  of  a  shared  secret,  and  feeling  a  certain 
soothing  influence  in  the  ndivett  and  simplicity  of  the  old  man's 
sympathy,  had  allowed  himself  at  times,  in  the  years  succeeding 
that  illness  of  his,  an  amount  of  unbending  in  Meyrick's  pres- 
ence, such  as  probably  no  other  mortal  had  ever  witnessed  in 
him  since  his  earliest  youth. 

And  yet  how  childish  the  old  man's  whole  mental  image  of 
the  squire  was  after  all !  What  small  account  it  made  of  the 
subtleties,  the  gnarled  intricacies  and  contradictions  of  such  a 
character  !  Horror  at  his  father's  end,  and  dread  of  a  like  fate 
for  himself  !  Robert  did  not  know  very  much  of  the  squire, 
but  he  knew  enough  to  feel  sure  that  this  confiding  indulgent 
theory  of  Meyrick's  was  ludicrously  far  from  the  mark  as  an 
adequate  explanation  of  Mr.  Wendover's  later  life. 

Presently  Meyrick  became  aware  of  the  sort  of  tacit  resist- 
ance which  his  companion's  mind  was  opposing  to  his  own.  He 
dropped  the  wandering  narrative  he  was  busy  upon  with  a 
sigh. 

'Ah  well,  I  daresay  it's  hard,  it's  hard,'  he  said  with  patient 
acquiescence  in  his  voice,  '  to  believe  a  man  can't  help  himself. 
I  daresay  we  doctors  get  to  muddle  up  right  and  wrong.  But 
if  ever  there  was  a  man  sick  in  mind — for  all  his  book-learning 
they  talk  about — and  sick  in  soul,  that  man  is  the  squire.' 

Robert  looked  at  him  with  a  softer  expression.  There  was 
a  new  dignity  about  the  simple  old  man.  The  old-fashioned 
deference,  which  had  never  let  him  forget  in  speaking  to  Robert 
that  he  was  speaking  to  a  man  of  family,  and  which  showed 


290  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

itself  in  all  sorts  of  antiquated  locutions  which  were  a  torment 
to  his  son,  had  given  way  to  something  still  more  deeply  in- 
grained. His  gaunt  figure,  with  the  stoop,  and  the  spectacles 
and  the  long  straight  hair — like  the  figure  of  a  superannuated 
schoolmaster — assumed,  as  he  turned  again  to  his  younger  com- 
panion, something  of  authority,  something  almost  of  stateliness. 

'Ah,  Mr.  Elsmere,'  he  said,  laying  his  shrunk  hand  on  the 
younger  man's  sleeve  and  speaking  with  emotion,  '  you're  very 
good  to  the  poor.  We're  all  proud  of  you — you  and  your  good 
lady.  But  when  you  were  coming,  and  I  heard  tell  all  about 
you,  I  thought  of  my  poor  squire,  and  I  said  to  myself,  "  That 
young  man  '11  be  good  to  him.  The  squire  will  make  friends 
with  him,  and  Mr.  Elsmere  will  have  a  good  wife — and  there'll 
be  children  born  to  him — and  the  squire  will  take  an  interest — 
and — and — maybe " ' 

The  old  man  paused.     Robert  grasped  his  hand  silently. 

'And  there  was  something  in  the  way  between  you,'  the 
speaker  went  on,  sighing.  'I  daresay  you  were  quite  right — 
quite  right.  I  can't  judge.  Only  there  are  ways  of  doing  a 
thing.  And  it  was  a  last  chance ;  and  now  it's  missed — it's 
missed.  Ah  !  it's  no  good  talking ;  he  has  a  heart — he  has  ! 
Many's  the  kind  thing  he's  done  in  old  days  for  me  and  mine — 
I'll  never  forget  them  !  But  all  these  last  few  years — oh,  I 
know,  I  know.  You  can't  go  and  shut  your  heart  up,  and  fly 
in  the  face  of  all  the  duties  the  Lord  laid  on  you,  without  losing 
yourself  and  setting  the  Lord  against  you.  But  it  is  pitiful, 
Mr.  Elsmere.  it's  pitiful ! ' 

It  seemed  to  Robert  suddenly  as  though  there  was  a  Divine 
breath  passing  through  the  wintry  lane  and  through  the  shaking 
voice  or  the  old  man.  Beside  the  spirit  looking  out  of  those 
wrinkled  eyes,  his  own  hot  youth,  its  justest  resentments,  its 
most  righteous  angers,  seemed  crude,  harsh,  inexcusable. 

'  Thank  you,  Meyrick,  thank  you,  and  God  bless  you  !  Don't 
imagine  I  will  forget  a  word  you  have  said  to  me.' 

The  rector  shook  the  hand  he  held  warmly  twice  over,  a 
gentle  smile  passed  over  Meyrick's  ageing  face,  and  they  parted. 

That  night  it  fell  to  Robert  to  sit  up  after  midnight  with 
John  Allwood,  the  youth  of  twenty  whose  case  had  been  a 
severer  tax  on  the  powers  of  the  little  nursing  staff  than  per- 
haps any  other.  Mother  and  neighbours  were  worn  out,  and  it 
was  difficult  to  spare  a  hospital  nurse  for  long  together  from 
the  diphtheria  cases.  Robert,  therefore,  had  insisted  during 
the  preceding  week  on  taking  alternate  nights  with  one  of  the 
nurses.  During  the  first  hours  before  midnight  he  slept  soundly 
on  a  bed  made  up  in  the  ground-floor  room  of  the  little  sana- 
torium. Then  at  twelve  the  nurse  called  him,  and  he  went  out, 
his  eyes  still  heavy  with  sleep,  into  a  still  frosty  winter's  night. 

After  so  much  rain,  so  much  restlessness  of  wind  and  cloud, 
the  silence  and  the  starry  calm  of  it  were  infinitely  welcome. 
The  sharp  cold  air  cleared  his  brain  and  braced  his  nerves,  and 


CHAP,  xxi  THE  SQUIRE  291 

by  the  time  he  reached  the  cottage  whither  he  was  bound,  he 
was  broad  awake.  He  opened  the  door  softly,  passed  through 
the  lower  room,  crowded  with  sleeping  children,  climbed  the 
narrow  stairs  as  noiselessly  as  possible,  and  found  himself  in  a 
garret,  faintly  lit,  a  bed  in  one  comer  and  a  woman  sitting 
beside  it.  The  woman  glided  away,  the  rector  looked  carefully 
at  the  table  of  instructions  hanging  over  the  bed,  assured  him- 
self that  wine  and  milk  and  beef  essence  and  medicines  were 
ready  to  his  hand,  put  out  his  watch  on  the  wooden  table  near 
the  bed,  and  sat  him  down  to  his  task.  The  boy  was  sleeping 
the  sleep  of  weakness.  Food  was  to  be  given  every  half -hour, 
and  in  this  perpetual  impulse  to  the  system  lay  his  only  chance. 

The  rector  had  his  Greek  Testament  with  him,  and  could 
just  read  it  by  the  help  of  the  dim  light.  But  after  a  while,  as 
the  still  hours  passed  on,  it  dropped  on  to  his  knee,  and  he  sat 
thinking — endlessly  thinking.  The  young  labourer  lay  motion- 
less beside  him,  the  lines  of  the  long  emaciated  frame  showing 
through  the  bed  -  clothes.  The  night  -  light  flickered  on  the 
broken  discoloured  ceiling ;  every  now  and  then  a  mouse 
scratched  in  the  plaster ;  the  mother's  heavy  breathing  came 
from  the  next  room ;  sometimes  a  dog  barked  or  an  owl  cried 
outside.  Otherwise  deep  silence,  such  silence  as  drives  the  soul 
back  upon  itself. 

Elsmere  was  conscious  of  a  strange  sense  of  moral  expansion. 
The  stern  judgments,  the  passionate  condemnations  which  his 
nature  housed  so  painfully,  seemed  lifted  from  it.  The  soul 
breathed  an  '  ampler  aether,  a  diviner  air.'  Oh  !  the  mysteries 
of  life  and  character,  the  subtle  inexhaustible  claims  of  pity  ! 
The  problems  which  hang  upon  our  being  here ;  its  mixture  of 
elements  ;  the  pressure  of  its  inexorable  physical  environment ; 
the  relations  of  mind  to  body,  of  man's  poor  will  to  this  tangled 
tyrannous  life — it  was  along  these  old,  old  lines  his  thought 
went  painfully  groping  ;  and  always  at  intervals  it  came  back 
to  the  squire,  pondering,  seeking  to  understand,  a  new  sober- 
ness, a  new  humility  and  patience  entering  in. 

And  yet  it  was  not  Meyrick's  facts  exactly  that  had  brought 
this  about.  Kobert  thought  them  imperfect,  only  half  true. 
Rather  was  it  the  spirit  of  love,  of  infinite  forbearance  in  which 
the  simpler,  duller  nature  had  declared  itself  that  had  appealed 
to  him,  nay,  reproached  him. 

Then  these  thoughts  led  him  on  farther  and  farther  from 
man  to  God,  from  human  defect  to  the  Eternal  Perfectness. 
Never  once  during  those  hours  did  Elsmere's  hand  fail  to  per- 
form its  needed  service  to  the  faint  sleeper  beside  him,  and  vet 
that  night  was  one  long  dream  and  strangeness  to  him,  nothing 
real  anywhere  but  consciousness,  and  God  its  source ;  the  soul 
attacked  every  now  and  then  by  phantom  stabs  of  doubt,  of 
bitter  brief  misgiving,  as  the  barriers  of  sense  between  it  and 
the  eternal  enigma  grew  more  and  more  transparent,  wrestling 
awhile,  and  then  prevailing.  And  each  golden  moment  of  cer- 


292  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  ill 

tainty,  of  conquering  faith,  seemed  to  Kobert  in  some  sort  a  gift 
from  Catherine's  hand.  It  was  she  who  led  him  through  the 
shades ;  it  was  her  voice  murmuring  in  his  ear. 

When  the  first  gray  dawn  began  to  creep  in  slowly  perceptible 
waves  into  the  room,  Elsmere  felt  as  though  not  hours  but  years 
of  experience  lay  between  him  and  the  beginnings  of  his  watch. 

'  It  is  by  these  moments  we  should  date  our  lives,'  he  mur- 
mured to  himself  as  he  rose ;  '  they  are  the  only  real  landmarks.' 

It  was  eight  o'clock,  and  the  nurse  who  was  to  relieve  him 
had  come.  The  results  of  the  night  for  his  charge  were  good  : 
the  strength  had  been  maintained,  the  pulse  was  firmer,  the 
temperature  lower.  The  boy,  throwing  off  his  drowsiness,  lay 
watching  the  rector's  face  as  he  talked  in  an  undertone  to  the 
nurse,  his  haggard  eyes  full  of  a  dumb  friendly  wistfulness. 
When  Robert  bent  over  him  to  say  good-bye,  this  expression 
brightened  into  something  more  positive,  and  Robert  left  him, 
feeling  at  last  that  there  was  a  promise  of  life  in  his  look  and 
touch. 

In  another  moment  he  had  stepped  out  into  the  January 
morning.  It  was  clear  and  still  as  the  night  had  been.  In  the 
east  there  was  a  pale  promise  of  sun  ;  the  reddish-brown  trunks 
of  the  fir  woods  had  just  caught  it,  and  rose  faintly  glowing 
in  endless  vistas  and  colonnades  one  behind  the  other.  The 
flooded  river  itself  rushed  through  the  bridge  as  full  and  turbid 
as  before,  but  all  the  other  water  surfaces  had  gleaming  films 
of  ice.  The  whole  ruinous  place  had  a  clean,  almost  a  festal  air 
under  the  touch  of  the  frost,  while  on  the  side  of  the  hill  leading 
to  Murewell,  tree  rose  above  tree,  the  delicate  network  of  their 
wintry  twigs  and  branches  set  against  stretches  of  frost- whitened 

frass,  till  finally  they  climbed  into  the  pale  all-completing  blue. 
Q  a  copse  close  at  hand  there  were  woodcutters  at  work,  and 
piles  of  gleaming  laths  shining  through  the  underwood.  Robins 
hopped  along  the  frosty  road,  and  as  he  walked  on  through  the 
houses  towards  the  bridge,  Robert's  quick  ear  distinguished 
that  most  wintry  of  all  sounds — the  cry  of  a  flock  of  fieldfares 
passing  overhead. 

As  he  neared  the  bridge  he  suddenly  caught  sight  of  a  figure 
upon  it,  the  figure  of  a  man  wrapped  in  a  large  Inverness  cloak, 
leaning  against  the  stone  parapet.  With  a  start  he  recognised 
the  squire. 

He  went  up  to  him  without  an  instant's  slackening  of  his 
steady  step.  The  squire  heard  the  sound  of  some  one  coming, 
turned,  and  saw  the  rector. 

'  I  am  glad  to  see  you  here,  Mr.  Wendover,'  said  Robert,  stop- 
ping and  holding  out  his  hand.  '  I  meant  to  have  come  to  talk 
to  you  about  this  place  this  morning.  I  ought  to  have  come 
before.' 

He  spoke  gently,  and  quite  simply,  almost  as  if  they  had 
parted  the  day  before.  The  squire  touched  his  hand  for  an 
list  ant. 


CHAP,  xxi  THE  SQUIRE  293 

'You  may  not,  perhaps,  be  aware,  Mr.  Elsmere,'  he  said, 
endeavouring  to  speak  with  all  his  old  hauteur,  while  his  heavy 
lips  twitched  nervously,  'that,  for  one  reason  and  another,  I 
knew  nothing  of  the  epidemic  here  till  yesterday,  when  Meyrick 
told  me.' 

'  I  heard  from  Mr.  Meyrick  that  it  was  so.  As  you  are  here 
now,  Mr.  Wendover,  and  I  am  in  no  great  hurry  to  get  home, 
may  I  take  you  through  and  show  you  the  people  ? ' 

The  squire  at  last  looked  at  him  straight — at  the  face  worn 
and  pale,  yet  still  so  extraordinarily  youthful,  in  which  some- 
thing of  the  solemnity  and  high  emotion  of  the  night  seemed  to 
be  still  lingering. 

'Are  you  just  come?'  he  said  abruptly,  'or  are  you  going 
back?' 

'  I  have  been  here  through  the  night,  sitting  up  with  one  of 
the  fever  cases.  It's  hard  work  for  the  nurses,  and  the  relations 
sometimes,  without  help.' 

The  squire  moved  on  mechanically  towards  the  village,  and 
Robert  moved  beside  him. 

'And  Mrs.  Elsmere?' 

'  Mrs.  Elsmere  was  here  most  of  yesterday.  She  used  to  stay 
the  night  when  the  diphtheria  was  at  its  worst ;  but  there  are 
only  four  anxious  cases  left — the  rest  all  convalescent.' 

The  squire  said  no  more,  and  they  turned  into  the  lane, 
where  the  ice  lay  thick  in  the  deep  ruts,  and  on  either  hand 
curls  of  smoke  rose  into  the  clear  cold  sky.  The  squire 
looked  about  him  with  eyes  which  no  detail  escaped.  Robert, 
without  a  word  of  comment,  pointed  out  this  feature  and  that, 
showed  where  Henslowe  had  begun  repairs,  where  the  new  well 
was  to  be,  what  the  water  supply  had  been  till  now,  drew  the 
squire's  attention  to  the  roofs,  the  pigstyes,  the  drainage,  or 
rather  complete  absence  of  drainage,  and  all  in  the  dry  voice  of 
some  one  going  through  a  catalogue.  Word  had  already  fled  like 
wildfire  through  the  hamlet  that  the  squire  was  there.  Children 
and  adults,  a  pale  emaciated  crew,  poured  out  into  the  wintry 
air  to  look.  The  squire  knit  his  brows  with  annoyance  as  the 
little  crowd  in  the  lane  grew.  Robert  took  no  notice. 

Presently  he  pushed  open  the  door  of  the  house  where  he 
had  spent  the  night.  In  the  kitchen  a  girl  of  sixteen  was  clear- 
ing away  the  various  nondescript  heaps  on  which  the  family 
had  slept,  and  was  preparing  breakfast.  The  squire  looked  at 
the  floor. 

'I  thought  I  understood  from  Henslowe,'  he  muttered,  as 
though  to  himself,  '  that  there  were  no  mud  floors  left  on  the 
estate ' 

'There  are  only  three  houses  in  Mile  End  without  them,' 
said  Robert,  catching  what  he  said. 

They  went  upstairs,  and  the  mother  stood  open-eyed  whilo 
the  squire's  restless  look  gathered  in  the  details  of  the  room, 
the  youth's  face,  as  he  lay  back  on  his  pillows,  whiter  than  they, 


294  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

exhausted  and  yet  refreshed  by  the  sponging  with  vinegar  and 
water  which  the  mother  had  just  been  administering  to  him  ; 
the  bed,  the  gaps  in  the  worm-eaten  boards,  the  spots  in  the 
roof  where  the  plaster  bulged  inward,  as  though  a  snake  would 
bring  it  down ;  the  coarse  china  shepherdesses  on  the  mantel- 
shelf, and  the  flowers  which  Catherine  had  put  there  the  day 
before.  He  asked  a  few  questions,  said  an  abrupt  word  or  two 
to  the  mother,  and  they  tramped  downstairs  again  and  into  the 
street.  Then  Robert  took  him  across  to  the  little  improvised 
hospital,  saying  to  him  on  the  threshold,  with  a  moment's 
hesitation, — 

'  As  you  know,  for  adults  there  is  not  much  risk,  but  there  is 
always  some  risk— 

A  peremptory  movement  of  the  squire's  hand  stopped  him, 
and  they  went  in.  In  the  downstairs  room  were  half-a-dozen 
convalescents,  pale,  shadowy  creatures,  four  of  them  under  ten, 
sitting  up  in  their  little  cots,  each  of  them  with  a  red  flannel 
jacket  drawn  from  Lady  Helen's  stores,  and  enjoying  the  break- 
fast which  a  nurse  in  white  cap  and  apron  had  just  brought 
them.  Upstairs,  in  a  room  from  which  a  lath-and-plaster 
partition  had  been  removed,  and  which  had  been  adapted, 
warmed  and  ventilated  by  various  contrivances  to  which  Robert 
and  Meyrick  had  devoted  their  practical  minds,  were  the  '  four 
anxious  cases.'  One  of  them,  a  little  creature  of  six,  one  of 
Sharland's  black-eyed  children,  was  sitting  up,  supported  by  the 
nurse,  and  coughing  its  little  life  away.  As  soon  as  he  saw  it, 
Robert's  step  quickened.  He  forgot  the  squire  altogether.  He 
came  and  stood  by  the  bedside,  rigidly  still,  for  he  could  do 
nothing,  but  his  whole  soul  absorbed  in  that  horrible  struggle 
for  air.  How  often  he  had  seen  it  now,  and  never  without  the 
same  wild  sense  of  revolt  and  protest !  At  last  the  hideous 
membrane  was  loosened,  the  child  got  relief,  and  lay  back  white 
and  corpse-like,  but  with  a  pitiful  momentary  relaxation  of  the 
drawn  lines  on  its  little  brow.  Robert  stooped  and  kissed  the 
damp  tiny  hand.  The  child's  eyes  remained  shut,  but  the  fingers 
made  a  feeble  effort  to  close  on  his. 

'Mr.  Elsmere,'  said  the  nurse,  a  motherly  body,  looking  at 
him  with  friendly  admonition,  '  if  you  don't  go  home  and  rest 
you'll  be  ill  too,  and  I'd  like  to  know  who'll  be  the  better  for 
that  1 ' 

'How  many  deaths?'  asked  the  squire  abruptly,  touching 
Elsmere's  arm,  and  so  reminding  Robert  of  his  existence. 
'  Meyrick  spoke  of  deaths.' 

He  stood  near  the  door,  but  his  eyes  were  fixed  on  the  little 
bed,  on  the  half -swooning  child. 

'  Seven,'  said  Robert,  turning  upon  him.  '  Five  of  diphtheria, 
two  of  fever.  That  little  one  will  go  too.' 

'  Horrible ! '  said  the  squire  under  his  breath,  and  then 
moved  to  the  door. 

The  two  men  went  downstairs  in  perfect  silence.    Below,  in 


CHAP,  xxi  THE  SQUIRE  295 

the  convalescent  room,  the  children  were  capable  of  smiles,  and 
of  quick  coquettish  beckonings  to  the  rector  to  come  and  make 
game  with  them  as  usual.  But  he  could  only  kiss  his  hand  to 
them  and  escape,  for  there  was  more  to  do. 

He  took  the  squire  through  all  the  remaining  fever  cases, 
and  into  several  of  the  worst  cottages — Milsom's  among  them — 
and  when  it  was  all  over  they  emerged  into  the  lane  again,  near 
the  bridge.  There  was  still  a  crowd  of  children  and  women 
hanging  about,  watching  eagerly  for  the  squire,  whom  many  of 
them  had  never  seen  at  all,  and  about  whom  various  myths  had 
gradually  formed  themselves  in  the  countryside.  The  squire 
walked  away  from  them  hurriedly,  followed  by  Robert,  and 
again  they  halted  on  the  centre  of  the  bridge.  A  horse  led  by 
a  groom  was  being  walked  up  and  down  on  a  flat  piece  of  road 
just  beyond. 

It  was  an  awkward  moment.  Robert  never  forgot  the  thrill 
of  it,  or  the  association  of  wintry  sunshine  streaming  down  upon 
a  sparkling  world  of  ice  and  delicate  woodland  and  foam-flecked 
river. 

The  squire  turned  towards  him  irresolutely  ;  his  sharply-cut 
wrinkled  lips  opening  and  closing  again.  Then  he  held  out  his 
hand  :  '  Mr.  Elsmere,  I  did  you  a  wrong — I  did  this  place  and 
its  people  a  wrong.  In  my  view,  regret  for  the  past  is  useless. 
Much  of  what  has  occurred  here  is  plainly  irreparable ;  I  will 
think  what  can  be  done  for  the  future.  As  for  my  relation  to 
you,  it  rests  with  you  to  say  whether  it  can  be  amended.  I 
recognise  that  you  have  just  cause  of  complaint.' 

What  invincible  pride  there  was  in  the  man's  very  surrender ! 
But  Elsmere  was  not  repelled  by  it.  He  knew  that  in  their 
hour  together  the  squire  had  felt.  His  soul  had  lost  its  bitter- 
ness. The  dead  and  their  wrong  were  with  God. 

He  took  the  squire's  outstretched  hand,  grasping  it  cordially, 
a  pure  unworldly  dignity  in  his  whole  look  and  bearing. 

'  Let  us  be  friends,  Mr.  Wendover.  It  will  be  a  great  comfort 
to  us — my  wife  and  me.  Will  you  remember  us  both  very 
kindly  to  Mrs.  Darcy  ? ' 

Commonplace  words,  but  words  that  made  an  epoch  in  the 
life  of  both.  In  another  minute  the  squire,  on  horseback,  was 
trotting  along  the  side  road  leading  to  the  Hall,  and  Robert  was 
speeding  home  to  Catherine  as  fast  as  his  long  legs  could  carry 
him. 

She  was  waiting  for  him  on  the  steps,  shading  her  eyes 
against  the  unwonted  sun.  He  kissed  her  with  the  spirits  or  a 
boy  and  told  her  all  his  news. 

Catherine  listened  bewildered,  not  knowing  what  to  say  or 
how  all  at  once  to  forgive,  to  join  Robert  in  forgetting.  But 
that  strange  spiritual  glow  about  him  was  not  to  be  withstood. 
She  threw  her  arms  about  him  at  last  with  a  half  sob, — 

'  Oh,  Robert— yes  !     Dear  Robert— thank  God  ! ' 

'.Never  think  any  more,'  he  said  at  last,  leading  her  in  from 


296  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  HI 

the  little  hall,  '  of  what  has  been,  only  of  what  shall  be  !  Oh, 
Catherine,  give  me  some  tea  ;  and  never  did  I  see  anything  so 
tempting  as  that  armchair.' 

He  sank  down  into  it,  and  when  she  put  his  breakfast  beside 
him  she  saw  with  a  start  that  he  was  fast  asleep.  The  wife 
stood  and  watched  him,  the  signs  of  fatigue  round  eyes  and 
mouth,  the  placid  expression,  and  her  face  was  soft  with  tender- 
ness and  joy.  '  Of  course — of  course,  even  that  hard  man  must 
love  him.  Who  could  help  it  1  My  Robert ! ' 

And  so  now  in  this  disguise,  now  in  that,  the  supreme  hour 
of  Catherine's  life  stole  on  and  on  towards  her. 


CHAPTER  XXH 

As  may  be  imagined,  the  Churton  Advertiser  did  not  find  its 
way  to  Murewell.  It  was  certainly  no  pressure  of  social  dis- 
approval that  made  the  squire  go  down  to  Mile  End  in  that 
winter's  dawn.  The  county  might  talk,  or  the  local  press 
might  harangue,  till  Doomsday,  and  Mr.  Wendover  would  either 
know  nothing  or  care  less. 

Still  his  interview  with  Meyrick  in  the  park  after  his  return 
from  a  week  in  town,  whither  he  had  gone  to  see  some  old 
Berlin  friends,  had  been  a  shock  to  him.  A  man  may  play  the 
intelligent  recluse,  may  refuse  to  fit  his  life  to  his  neighbours' 
notions  as  much  as  you  please,  and  still  find  death,  especially 
death  for  which  he  has  some  responsibility,  as  disturbing  a  fact 
as  the  rest  of  us. 

He  went  home  in  much  irritable  discomfort.  It  seemed  to 
him  probably  that  fortune  need  not  have  been  so  eager  to  put 
him  in  the  wrong.  To  relieve  his  mind  he  sent  for  Henslowe, 
and  in  an  interview,  the  memory  of  which  sent  a  shiver  through 
the  agent  to  the  end  of  his  days,  he  let  it  be  seen  that  though  it 
did  not  for  the  moment  suit  him  to  dismiss  the  man  who  had 
brought  this  upon  him,  that  man's  reign  in  any  true  sense  was 
over. 

But  afterwards  the  squire  was  still  restless.  What  was  astir 
in  him  was  not  so  much  pity  or  remorse  as  certain  instincts  of 
race  which  still  survived  under  the  strange  superstructure  of 
manners  he  had  built  upon  them.  It  may  be  the  part  of  a 
gentleman  and  a  scholar  to  let  the  agent  whom  you  have  inter- 
posed between  yourself  and  a  boorish  peasantry  have  a  free 
hand  ;  but,  after  all,  the  estate  is  yours,  and  to  expose  the  rector 
of  the  parish  to  all  sorts  of  avoidable  risks  in  the  pursuit  of  his 
official  duty  by  reason  of  the  gratuitous  filth  of  your  property, 
is  an  act  of  doubtful  breeding.  The  squire  in  his  most  rough- 
and-tumble  days  at  Berlin  had  always  felt  himself  the  grandee 
as  well  as  the  student.  He  abhorred  sentimentalised,  but  neither 
did  he  choose  to  cut  an  unseemly  figure  in  his  own  eyes. 


CHAP,  xxn  THE  SQUIRE  297 

After  a  night,  therefore,  less  tranquil  or  less  meditative  than 
usual,  he  rose  early  and  sallied  forth  at  one  of  those  unusual 
hours  he  generally  chose  for  walking.  The  thing  must  be  put 
right  somehow,  and  at  once,  with  as  little  waste  of  time  and 
energy  as  possible,  and  Henslowe  had  shown  himself  not  to  be 
trusted  j  so  telling  a  servant  to  follow  him,  the  squire  had 
made  his  way  with  difficulty  to  a  place  he  had  not  seen  for 
years. 

Then  had  followed  the  unexpected  and  unwelcome  apparition 
of  the  rector.  The  squire  did  not  want  to  be  impressed  by  the 
young  man,  did  not  want  to  make  friends  with  him.  No  doubt 
his  devotion  had  served  his  own  purposes.  Still  Mr.  Wendover 
was  one  of  the  subtlest  living  judges  of  character  when  he 
pleased,  and  his  enforced  progress  through  these  hovels  with 
Elsmere  had  not  exactly  softened  him,  but  had  filled  him  with 
a  curious  contempt  for  his  own  hastiness  of  judgment. 

4  History  would  be  inexplicable  after  all  without  the  honest 
fanatic,'  he  said  to  himself  on  the  way  home.  '  I  suppose  I  had 
forgotten  it.  There  is  nothing  like  a  dread  of  being  bored  for 
blunting  your  psychological  instinct.' 

In  the  course  of  the  day  he  sent  off  a  letter  to  the  rector  in- 
timating in  the  very  briefest,  driest  way  that  the  cottages 
should  be  rebuilt  on  a  different  site  as  soon  as  possible,  and  en- 
closing a  liberal  contribution  towards  the  expenses  incurred  in 
fighting  the  epidemic.  When  the  letter  was  gone  he  drew  his 
books  towards  him  with  a  sound  which  was  partly  disgust, 
partly  relief.  This  annoying  business  had  wretchedly  inter- 
rupted him,  and  his  concessions  left  him  mainly  conscious  of 
a  strong  nervous  distaste  for  the  idea  of  any  fresh  interview 
with  young  Elsmere.  He  had  got  his  money  and  his  apology  ; 
let  him  be  content. 

However,  next  morning  after  breakfast  Mr.  Wendover  once 
more  saw  his  study  door  open  to  admit  the  tall  figure  of  the 
rector.  The  note  and  cheque  had  reached  Robert  late  the  night 
before,  and,  true  to  his  new-born  determination  to  make  the  best 
of  the  squire,  he  had  caught  up  his  wideawake  at  the  first  oppor- 
tunity and  walked  off  to  the  Hall  to  acknowledge  the  gift  in  per- 
son. The  interview  opened  as  awkwardly  as  it  was  possible,  and 
with  their  former  conversation  on  the  same  spot  fresh  in  their 
minds  both  men  spent  a  sufficiently  difficult  ten  minutes.  The 
squire  was  asking  himself,  indeea,  impatiently,  all  the  time, 
whether  lie  could  possibly  be  forced  in  the  future  to  put  up 
with  such  an  experience  again,  and  Robert  found  his  host,  if 
less  sarcastic  than  before,  certainly  as  impenetrable  as  ever. 

At  last,  however,  the  Mile  End  matter  was  exhausted,  and 
then  Robert,  as  good  luck  would  have  it,  turned  his  longing 
eyes  on  the  squire  s  books,  especially  on  the  latest  volumes  of  a 
magnificent  German  Weltgeschichte  lying  near  his  elbow,  which 
he  had  coveted  for  months  without  being  able  to  conquer  hi3 
conscience  sufficiently  to  become  the  possessor  of  it.  He  took  it 


298  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

up  with  an  exclamation  of  delight,  and  a  quiet  critical  remark 
that  exactly  hit  the  value  and  scope  of  the  book.  The  squire's 
eyebrows  went  up,  and  the  corners  of  his  mouth  slackened 
visibly.  Half  an  hour  later  the  two  men,  to  the  amazement  of 
Mrs.  Darcy,  who  was  watching  them  from  the  drawing-room 
window,  walked  back  to  the  park  gates  together,  and  what 
Robert's  nobility  and  beauty  of  character  would  never  have  won 
him,  though  he  had  worn  himself  to  death  in  the  service  of  the 
poor  and  the  tormented  under  the  squire's  eyes,  a  chance 
coincidence  of  intellectual  interest  had  won  him  almost  in  a 
moment. 

The  squire  walked  back  to  the  house  under  a  threatening 
sky,  'his  mackintosh  cloak  wrapped  about  him,  his  arms  folded, 
his  mind  full  of  an  unwonted  excitement. 

The  sentiment  of  long-past  days— days  in  Berlin,  in  Paris, 
where  conversations  such  as  that  he  had  just  passed  through 
were  the  daily  relief  and  reward  of  labour,  was  stirring  in  him. 
Occasionally  he  had  endeavoured  to  import  the  materials  for 
them  from  the  Continent,  from  London.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact 
it  was  years  since  he  had  had  any  such  talk  as  this  with  an 
Englishman  on  English  ground,  and  he  suddenly  realised  that  he 
had  been  unwholesomely  solitary,  and  that  for  the  scholar  there 
is  no  nerve  stimulus  like  that  of  an  occasional  interchange  of 
ideas  with  some  one  acquainted  with  his  Fach. 

1  Who  would  ever  have  thought  of  discovering  instincts  and 
aptitudes  of  such  a  kind  in  this  long-legged  optimist  V  The  squire 
shrugged  his  shoulders  as  he  thought  of  the  attempt  involved  in 
such  a  personality  to  combine  both  worlds,  the  world  of  action 
and  the  world  of  thought.  Absurd  !  Of  course,  ultimately  one 
or  other  must  go  to  the  wall. 

Meanwhile,  what  a  ludicrous  waste  of  time  and  opportunity 
that  he  and  this  man  should  have  been  at  cross-purposes  like 
this !  '  Why  the  deuce  couldn't  he  have  given  some  rational 
account  of  himself  to  begin  with  ! '  thought  the  squire  irritably, 
forgetting,  of  course,  who  it  was  that  had  wholly  denied  him  the 
opportunity.  '  And  then  the  sending  back  of  those  books : 
what  a  piece  of  idiocy  ! ' 

Granted  an  historical  taste  in  this  youngparson,  it  wasacurious 
chance,  Mr.  Wendover  reflected,  that  in  his  choice  of  a  subject 
he  should  just  have  fallen  on  the  period  of  the  later  empire — of 
the  passage  from  the  old  world  to  the  new,  where  the  squire 
was  a  master.  The  squire  fell  to  thinking  of  the  kind  of  know- 
ledge implied  in  his  remarks,  of  the  stage  he  seemed  to  have 
reached,  and  then  to  cogitating  as  to  the  books  he  must  be  now 
in  want  of.  He  went  back  to  his  library,  ran  over  the  shelves, 
picking  out  volumes  here  and  there  with  an  unwonted  glow  and 
interest  all  the  while.  He  sent  for  a  case,  and  made  a  youth 
who  sometimes  acted  as  his  secretary  pack  them.  And  still  as 
he  went  back  to  his  own  work  new  names  would  occur  to  him, 
and  full  of  the  scholar's  avaricious  sense  of  the  shortness  of 


CHAP,  xxi  r  THE  SQUIRE  299 

time,  he  would  shake  his  head  and  frown  over  the  three  months 
which  young  Elsniere  had  already  passed,  grappling  with  prob- 
lems like  Teutonic  Arianism,  the  spread  of  Monasticism  in  Gaul, 
and  Heaven  knows  what  besides,  half  a  mile  from  the  man  and 
the  library  which  could  have  supplied  him  with  the  best  help 
to  be  got  in  England,  unbenefited  by  either !  Mile  End  was 
obliterated,  and  the  annoyance  of  the  morning  forgotten. 

The  next  day  was  Sunday,  a  wet  January  Sunday,  raw  and 
sleety,  the  frost  breaking  up  on  all  sides  and  flooding  the  roads 
with  mire. 

Robert,  rising  in  his  place  to  begin  morning  service,  and  won- 
dering to  see  the  congregation  so  good  on  such  a .  day,  was  sud- 
denly startled,  as  his  eye  travelled  mechanically  over  to  the 
Hall  pew,  usually  tenanted  by  Mrs.  Darcy  in  solitary  state,  to 
see  the  characteristic  figure  of  the  squire.  His  amazement  was 
so  great  that  he  almost  stumbled  in  the  exhortation,  and  his 
feeling  was  evidently  shared  by  the  congregation,  which  through- 
out the  service  showed  a  restlessness,  an  excited  tendency  to 
peer  round  corners  and  pillars,  that  was  not  favourable  to 
devotion. 

'  Has  he  come  to  spy  out  the  land  ? '  the  rector  thought  to 
liimself,  and  could  not  help  a  momentary  tremor  at  the  idea  of 
preaching  before  so  formidable  an  auditor.  Then  he  pulled 
himself  together  by  a  great  effort,  and  fixing  his  eyes  on  a  shock- 
headed  urchin  half  way  down  the  church,  read  the  service  to 
him.  Catherine  meanwhile  in  her  seat  on  the  northern  side  of 
the  nave,  her  soul  lulled  in  Sunday  peace,  knew  nothing  of  Mr. 
Wendover's  appearance. 

Robert  preached  on  the  first  sermon  of  Jesus,  on  the  first  ap- 
pearance of  the  young  Master  in  the  synagogue  at  Nazareth  : — 

'  This  day  is  this  scripture  fulfilled  in  your  ears  I ' 

The  sermon  dwelt  on  the  Messianic  aspect  of  Christ's  mission, 
on  the  mystery  and  poetry  of  that  long  national  expectation,  on 
the  pathos  of  Jewish  disillusion,  on  the  sureness  and  beauty  of 
Christian  insight  as  faith  gradually  transferred  trait  after  trait 
of  the  Messiah  of  prophecy  to  the  Christ  of  Nazareth.  At  first 
there  was  a  certain  amount  of  hesitation,  a  slight  wavering 
hither  and  thither — a  difficult  choice  of  words — and  then  the 
soul  freed  itself  from  man,  and  the  preacher  forgot  all  but  his 
Master  and  his  people. 

At  the  door  as  he  came  out  stood  Mr.  Wendover,  and  Catherine, 
slightly  flushed  and  much  puzzled  for  conversation,  beside  him. 
The  Hall  carriage  was  drawn  close  up  to  the  door,  and  Mrs. 
Darcy,  evidently  much  excited,  had  her  small  head  out  of  the 
window^  and  was  showering  a  number  of  flighty  inquiries  and 
suggestions  on  her  brother,  to  which  he  paid  no  more  heed  than 
to  the  patter  of  the  rain. 

When  Robert  appeared  the  squire  addressed  him  ceremoni- 
ously— 

'  With  your  leave,  Mr.  Elsmere,  I  will  walk  with  you  to  the 


300  EGBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

rectory.'  Then,  in  another  voice,  '  Go  home,  Lsetitia,  and  don't 
send  anything  or  anybody.' 

He  made  a  signal  to  the  coachman,  and  the  carriage  started, 
Mrs.  Darcy's  protesting  head  remaining  out  of  window  as  long 
as  anything  could  be  seen  of  the  group  at  the  church  door.  The 
odd  little  creature  had  paid  one  or  two  hurried  and  recent  visits 
to  Catherine  during  the  quarrel,  visits  so  filled,  however,  with 
vague  railing  against  her  brother  and  by  a  queer  incoherent 
melancholy,  that  Catherine  felt  them  extremely  uncomfortable, 
and  took  care  not  to  invite  them.  Clearly  she  was  mortally 
afraid  of  '  Roger,'  and  yet  ashamed  of  being  afraid.  Catherine 
could  see  that  all  the  poor  thing's  foolish  whims  and  affectations 
were  trampled  on ;  that  she  suffered,  rebelled,  found  herself  no 
more  able  to  affect  Mr.  Wendover  than  if  she  had  been  a  fly 
buzzing  round  him,  and  became  all  the  more  foolish  and  whimsical 
in  consequence. 

The  squire  and  the  Elsmeres  crossed  the  common  to  the 
rectory,  followed  at  a  discreet  interval  by  groups  of  villagers 
curious  to  get  a  look  at  the  squire.  Robert  was  conscious  of  a 
good  deal  of  embarrassment,  but  did  his  best  to  hide  it.  Catherine 
felt  all  through  as  if  the  skies  had  fallen.  The  squire  alone  was 
at  his  ease,  or  as  much  at  his  ease  as  he  ^ver  was.  He  com- 
mented on  the  congregation,  even  condescended  to  say  some- 
thing of  the  singing,  and  passed  over  the  staring  of  the  chor- 
isters with  a  magnanimity  of  silence  which  did  hirn  credit. 

They  reached  the  rectory  door,  and  it  was  evidently  the 
squire's  purpose  to  come  in,  so  Robert  invited  him  in.  Catherine 
threw  open  her  little  drawing-room  door,  and  then  was  seized 
with  shyness  as  the  squire  passed  in,  and  she  saw  over  his 
shoulder  her  baby,  lying  kicking  and  crowing  on  the  hearth- 
rug, in  anticipation  of  her  arrival,  the  nurse  watching  it.  The 
squire  in  his  great  cloak  stopped,  and  looked  down  at  the 
baby  as  if  it  had  been  some  curious  kind  of  reptile.  The  nurse 
blushed,  curtsied,  and  caught  up  the  gurgling  creature  in  a 
twinkling. 

Robert  made  a  laughing  remark  on  the  tyranny  and  ubiquity 
of  babies.  The  squire  smiled  grimly.  He  supposed  it  was 
necessary  that  the  human  race  should  be  carried  on.  Catherine 
meanwhile  slipped  out  and  ordered  another  place  to  be  laid  at 
the  dinner-table,  devoutly  hoping  that  it  might  not  be  used. 

It  was  used.  The  squire  stayed  till  it  was  necessary  to  invite 
him,  then  accepted  the  invitation,  and  Catherine  found  herself 
dispensing  boiled  mutton  to  him,  while  Robert  supplied  him 
with  some  very  modest  claret,  the  sort  of  wine  which  a  man 
who  drinks  none  thinks  it  necessary  to  have  in  the  house,  and 
watched  the  nervousness  of  their  little  parlour -maid  with  a 
fellow-feeling  which  made  it  difficult  for  him  during  the  early 
part  of  the  meal  to  keep  a  perfectly  straight  countenance. 
After  a  while,  however,  both  he  and  Catherine  were  ready  to 
admit  that  the  squire  was  making  himself  agreeable.  He  talked 


CHAP,  xxii  THE  SQUIRE  301 

of  Paris,  of  a  conversation  he  had  had  with  M.  Renan,  whose 
name  luckily  was  quite  unknown  to  Catherine,  as  to  the  state  of 
things  in  the  French  Chamber. 

'  A  sef.  of  chemists  and  quill-drivers,'  he  said  contemptuously  ; 
'  but  as  llenan  remarked  to  me,  there  is  one  thing  to  be  said  for 
a  government  of  that  sort,  "  Us  ne  font  pas  la  guerre."  And  so 
long  as  they  don't  run  France  into  adventures,  and  a  man  can 
keep  a  roof  over  his  head  and  a  sou  in  his  pocket,  the  men  of 
letters  at  any  rate  can  rub  along.  The  really  interesting  thing 
in  France  just  now  is  not  French  politics — Heaven  save  the 
mark ! — but  French  scholarship.  There  never  was  so  little 
original  genius  going  in  Paris,  and  there  never  was  so  much 
good  work  being  done.' 

Robert  thought  the  point  of  view  eminently  characteristic. 

'  Catholicism,  I  suppose,'  he  said.  '  as  a  force  to  be  reckoned 
with,  is  dwindling  more  and  more  ? 

'Absolutely  dead,'  said  the  squire  emphatically,  'as  an  in- 
tellectual force.  They  haven't  got  a  writer,  scarcely  a  preacher. 
Not  one  decent  book  has  been  produced  on  that  side  for  years.' 

'  And  the  Protestants,  too,'  said  Robert,  '  have  lost  all  their 
best  men  of  late,'  and  he  mentioned  one  or  two  well-known 
French  Protestant  names. 

'  Oh,  as  to  French  Protestantism ' — and  the  squire's  shrug  was 
superb — '  Teutonic  Protestantism  is  in  the  order  of  things,  so  to 
speak,  but  Latin  Protestantism !  There  is  no  more  sterile 
hybrid  in  the  world  ! ' 

Then,  becoming  suddenly  aware  that  he  might  have  said 
something  inconsistent  with  his  company,  the  squire  stopped 
abruptly.  Robert,  catching  Catherine's  quick  compression  of 
the  lips,  was  grateful  to  him,  and  the  conversation  moved  on 
in  another  direction. 

Yes,  certainly,  all  things  considered,  Mr.  Wendover  made 
himself  agreeable.  He  ate  his  boiled  mutton  and  drank  his 
ordinaire  like  a  man,  and  when  the  meal  was  over,  and  he  and 
Robert  had  withdrawn  into  the  study,  he  gave  an  emphatic 
word  of  praise  to  the  coffee  which  Catherine  s  housewifely  care 
sent  after  them,  and  accepting  a  cigar,  he  sank  into  the  arm- 
chair by  the  fire  and  spread  a  bony  hand  to  the  blaze,  as  if  he 
had  been  at  home  in  that  particular  corner  for  months.  Robert, 
sitting  opposite  to  him,  and  watching  his  guest's  eyes  travel 
round  the  room,  with  its  medicine  shelves,  its  rods  and  nets, 
and  preparations  of  uncanny  beasts,  its  parish  litter,  and  its 
teeming  bookcases,  felt  that  the  Mile  End  matter  was  turning 
out  oddly  indeed. 

'  I  have  packed  you  a  case  of  books,  Mr.  Elsmere,'  said  the 
squire,  after  a  puff  or  two  at  his  cigar.  '  How  have  you  got  on 
without  that  collection  of  Councils  v 

He  smiled  a  little  awkwardly.  It  was  one  of  the  books 
Robert  had  sent  back.  Robert  flushed.  He  did  not  want 
the  squire  to  regard  him  as  wholly  dependent  on  Murewell. 


302  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

'  I  bought  it,'  he  said,  rather  shortly.  '  I  have  ruined  myself 
in  books  lately,  and  the  London  Library  too  supplies  me  really 
wonderfully  well.' 

'  Are  these  your  books  ? '  The  squire  got  up  to  look  at  them. 
'  Hum,  not  at  all  bad  for  a  beginning.  I  have  sent  you  so  and 
so,'  and  he  named  one  or  two  costly  folios  that  Robert  had  long 
pined  for  in  vain. 

The  rector's  eyes  glistened. 

'  That  was  very  good  of  you,'  he  said  simply.  '  They  will  be 
most  welcome.' 

'  And  now,  how  much  time,1  said  the  other,  settling  himself 
again  to  his  cigar,  his  thin  legs  crossed  over  each  other,  and  his 
great  head  sunk  into  his  shoulders, '  how  much  time  do  you  give 
to  this  work  ? ' 

'  Generally  the  mornings — not  always.  A  man  with  twelve 
hundred  souls  to  look  after,  you  know,  Mr.  Wendover,'  said 
Elsmere,  with  a  bright  half -defiant  accent, '  can't  make  grubbing 
among  the  Franks  his  main  business.' 

The  squire  said  nothing,  and  smoked  on.  Robert  gathered 
that  his  companion  thought  his  chances  of  doing  anything 
worth  mentioning  very  small. 

'  Oh  no,'  he  said,  following  out  his  own  thought  with  a  shake 
of  his  curly  hair  ;  '  of  course  I  shall  never  do  very  much.  But 
if  I  don't,  it  won't  be  for  want  of  knowing  what  the  scholar's 
ideal  is.'  And  he  lifted  his  hand  with  a  smile  towards  the 
squire's  book  on  English  Culture,  which  stood  in  the  bookcase 
just  above  him.  The  squire,  following  the  gesture,  smiled  too. 
It  was  a  faint,  slight  illumining,  but  it  changed  the  face  agree- 
ably. 

Robert  began  to  ask  questions  about  the  book,  about  the 
pictures  contained  in  it  of  foreign  life  and  foreign  universities. 
The  squire  consented  to  be  drawn  out,  and  presently  was  talking 
at  his  very  best. 

Racy  stories  of  Mommsen  or  Von  Ranke  were  followed  by  a 
description  of  an  evening  of  mad  carouse  with  Heine — a  talk  at 
Nohant  with  George  Sand — scenes  in  the  Duchesse  de  Broglie's 
salon — a  contemptuous  sketch  of  Guizot — a  caustic  sketch  of 
Renan.  Robert  presently  even  laid  aside  his  pipe,  and  stood  in 
his  favourite  attitude,  lounging  against  the  mantelpiece,  looking 
down,  absorbed,  on  his  visitor.  All  that  intellectual  passion 
which  his  struggle  at  Mile  End  had  for  the  moment  checked  in 
him  revived.  Nay,  after  his  weeks  of  exclusive  contact  with 
the  most  hideous  forms  of  bodily  ill,  this  interruption,  these 
great  names,  this  talk  of  great  movements  and  great  causes, 
had  a  special  savour  and  relish.  All  the  horizons  of  the  mind 
expanded,  the  currents  of  the  blood  ran  quicker. 

Suddenly,  however,  he  sprang  up. 

'  I  beg  your  pardon,  Mr.  Wendover,  it  is  too  bad  to  interrupt 
you — I  have  enjoyed  it  immensely — but  the  fact  is  I  have  only 
two  minutes  to  get  to  Sunday  School  in  ! ' 


CHAP,  xxn  THE  SQUIRE  303 

Mr.  Wendover  rose  also,  and  resumed  his  ordinary  manner. 

'It  is  I  who  should  apologise,'  he  said  with  stiff  politeness, 
'for  having  encroached  in  this  way  on  your  busy  day,  Mr. 
Elsmere.' 

Robert  helped  him  on  with  his  coat,  and  then  suddenly  the 
squire  turned  to  him. 

'You  were  preaching  this  morning  on  one  of  the  Isaiah 
quotations  in  St.  Matthew.  It  would  interest  you,  I  imagine, 
to  see  a  recent  Jewish  book  on  the  subject  of  the  prophecies 
quoted  in  the  Gospels  which  reached  me  yesterday.  There  is 
nothing  particularly  new  in  it,  but  it  looked  to  me  well  done.' 

"Thank  you,'  said  Robert,  not,  however,  with  any  great 
heartiness,  and  the  squire  moved  away.  They  parted  at  the 
gate,  Robert  running  down  the  hill  to  the  village  as  fast  as  his 
long  legs  could  carry  him. 

'  Sunday  School — pshaw  ! '  cried  the  squire,  as  he  tramped 
homeward  in  the  opposite  direction. 

Next  morning  a  huge  packing-case  arrived  from  the  Hall, 
and  Robert  could  not  forbear  a  little  gloating  over  the  treasures 
in  it  before  he  tore  himself  away  to  pay  his  morning  visit  to 
Mile  End.  There  everything  was  improving ;  the  poor  Shar- 
land  child  indeed  had  slipped  away  on  the  night  after  the 
squire's  visit,  but  the  other  bad  cases  in  the  diphtheria  ward 
were  mending  fast.  John  Allwood  was  gaining  strength  daily, 
and  poor  Mary  Sharland  was  feebly  struggling  back  to  a  life 
which  seemed  hardly  worth  so  much  effort  to  keep.  Robert 
felt,  with  a  welcome  sense  of  slackening  strain,  that  the  daily 
and  hourly  superintendence  which  he  and  Catherine  had  been 
giving  to  the  place  might  lawfully  be  relaxed,  that  the  nurses 
on  the  spot  were  now  more  than  equal  to  their  task,  and  after 
having  made  his  round  he  raced  home  again  in  order  to  secure 
an  hour  with  his  books  before  luncheon. 

The  following  day  a  note  arrived,  while  they  were  at  luncheon, 
in  the  squire's  angular  precise  handwriting.  It  contained  a 
request  that,  unless  otherwise  engaged,  the  rector  would  walk 
with  Mr.  Wendover  that  afternoon. 

Robert  flung  it  across  to  Catherine. 

'  Let  me  see,'  he  said,  deliberating,  '  have  I  any  engagement 
I  must  keep  1 ' 

There  was  a  sort  of  jealousy  for  his  work  witliin  him  contend- 
ing with  this  new  fascination  of  the  squire's  company.  But, 
honestly,  there  was  nothing  in  the  way,  and  he  went. 

That  walk  was  the  first  of  many.  The  squire  had  no  sooner 
convinced  himselPthat  young  Elsmere's  society  did  in  reality 
provide  him  with  a  stimulus  and  recreation  he  had  been  too 
long  without,  than  in  his  imperious  wilful  way  he  began  to 
possess  himself  of  it  as  much  as  possible.  He  never  alluded  to 
the  trivial  matters  which  had  first  separated  and  then  united 
them.  He  worked  the  better,  he  thought  the  more  clearly,  for 
these  talks  and  walks  with  Elsmere,  and  therefore  these  talks 


304  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

and  walks  became  an  object  with  him.  They  supplied  a  long- 
stifled  want,  the  scholar's  want  of  disciples,  of  some  form  of 
investment  for  all  that  heaped-up  capital  of  thought  he  had 
been  accumulating  during  a  lifetime. 

As  for  Robert,  he  soon  felt  himself  so  much  under  the  spell 
of  the  squire's  strange  and  powerful  personality  that  he  was 
forced  to  make  a  fight  for  it,  lest  this  new  claim  should  encroach 
upon  the  old  ones.  He  would  walk  when  the  squire  liked,  but 
three  times  out  of  four  these  walks  must  be  parish  rounds, 
interrupted  by  descents  into  cottages  and  chats  in  farmhouse 
parlours.  The  squire  submitted.  The  neighbourhood  began  to 
wonder  over  the  strange  spectacle  of  Mr.  Wendover  waiting 
grimly  in  the  winter  dusk  outside  one  of  his  own  farmhouses 
while  Elsmere  was  inside,  or  patrolling  a  bit  of  lane  till  Elsmere 
should  have  inquired  after  an  invalid  or  beaten  up  a  recruit  for 
his  confirmation  class,  dogged  the  while  by  stealthy  children, 
with  fingers  in  their  mouths,  who  ran  away  in  terror  directly  he 
turned. 

Rumours  of  this  new  friendship  spread.  One  day,  on  the  bit 
of  road  between  the  Hall  and  the  rectory,  Lady  Helen  behind 
her  ponies  whirled  past  the  two  men,  and  her  arch  look  at 
Elsmere  said  as  plain  as  words,  '  Oh,  you  young  wonder  !  what 
hook  has  served  you  with  this  leviathan  ? ' 

On  another  occasion,  close  to  Churton,  a  man  in  a  cassock 
and  cloak  came  towards  them.  The  squire  put  up  his  eyeglass. 

'  Humph  ! '  he  remarked ;  '  do  you  know  this  merryandrew, 
Elsmere  1 ' 

It  was  Newcome.  As  they  passed,  Robert  with  slightly 
heightened  colour  gave  him  an  affectionate  nod  and  smile. 
Newcome's  quick  eye  ran  over  the  companions,  he  responded 
stiffly,  and  his  step  grew  more  rapid.  A  week  or  two  later 
Robert  noticed  with  a  little  prick  of  remorse  that  he  had  seen 
nothing  of  Newcome  for  an  age.  If  Newcome  would  not  come 
to  him,  he  must  go  to  Mottringham.  He  planned  an  expedition, 
but  something  happened  to  prevent  it. 

And  Catherine?  Naturally  this  new  and  most  unexpected 
relation  of  Robert's  to  the  man  who  had  begun  by  insulting  him 
was  of  considerable  importance  to  the  wife.  In  the  first  place 
it  broke  up  to  some  extent  the  exquisite  tete-a-tete  of  their  home 
life  ;  it  encroached  often  upon  time  that  had  always  been  hers  ; 
it  filled  Robert's  mind  more  and  more  with  matters  in  which 
she  had  no  concern.  All  these  things  many  wives  might  have 
resented.  Catherine  Elsmere  resented  none  of  them.  It  is 
probable,  of  course,  that  she  had  her  natural  moments  of  regret 
and  comparison,  when  love  said  to  itself  a  little  sorely  and 
hungrily,  '  It  is  hard  to  be  even  a  fraction  less  to  him  than  I 
once  was  ! '  But  if  so,  these  moments  never  betrayed  themselves 
in  word  or  act.  Her  tender  common  sense,  her  sweet  humility, 
made  her  recognise  at  once  Robert's  need  of  intellectual  comrade- 
ship, isolated  as  he  was  in  this  remote  rural  district.  She  knew 


CHAP,  xxn  THE  SQUIRE  305 

perfectly  that  a  clergyman's  life  of  perpetual  giving  forth 
becomes  morbid  and  unhealthy  if  there  is  not  some  correspond- 
ing taking  in. 

If  only  it  had  not  been  Mr.  Wendover  !  She  marvelled  over 
the  fascination  Robert  found  in  his  dry  cynical  taHc.  She 
wondered  that  a  Christian  pastor  could  ever  forget  Mr.  Wend- 
over's  antecedents ;  that  the  man  who  had  nursed  those  sick 
children  could  -forgive  Mile  End.  All  in  all  as  they  were  to 
each  other,  she  felt  for  the  first  time  that  she  often  understood 
her  husband  imperfectly.  His  mobility,  his  eagerness,  were 
sometimes  now  a  perplexity,  even  a  pain  to  her. 

It  must  not  be  imagined,  however,  that  Robert  let  himself 
drift  into  this  intellectual  intimacy  with  one  of  the  most 
distinguished  of  anti-Christian  thinkers  without  reflecting  on 
its  possible  consequences.  The  memory  of  that  night  of  misery 
which  The  Idols  of  the  Market-place  had  inflicted  on  him  was 
enough.  He  was  no  match  in  controversy  for  Mr.  Wendover, 
and  he  did  not  mean  to  attempt  it. 

One  morning  the  squire  unexpectedly  plunged  into  an 
account  of  a  German  monograph  he  had  just  received  on  the 
subject  of  the  Johannine  authorship  of  the  Fourth  Gospel.  It 
was  almost  the  first  occasion  on  which  he  had  touched  what  may 
strictly  be  called  the  materiel  of  orthodoxy  in  their  discussions 
— at  any  rate  directly.  But  the  book  was  a  striking  one,  and 
in  the  interest  of  it  he  had  clearly  forgotten  his  ground  a  little. 
Suddenly  the  man  who  was  walking  beside  him  interrupted  him. 

'I  think  we  ought  to  understand  one  another  perhaps,  Mr. 
Wendover,'  Robert  said,  speaking  under  a  quick  sense  of 
oppression,  but  with  his  usual  dignity  and  bright  courtesy.  '  I 
know  your  opinions,  of  course,  from  your  books ;  you  know 
what  mine,  as  an  honest  man,  must  be,  from  the  position  I  hold. 
My  conscience  does  not  forbid  me  to  discuss  anything,  only — I 
am  no  match  for  you  on  points  of  scholarship,  and  I  should  just 
like  to  say  once  for  all,  that  to  me,  whatever  else  is  true,  the 
religion  of  Christ  is  true.  I  am  a  Christian  and  a  Christian 
minister.  Therefore,  whenever  we  come  to  discuss  what  may 
be  called  Christian  evidence,  I  do  it  with  reserves,  which  you 
would  not  have.  I  believe  in  an  Incarnation,  a  Resurrection,  a 
Revelation.  If  there  are  literary  difficulties,  I  must  want  to 
smooth  them  away — you  may  want  to  make  much  of  them.  We 
come  to  the  matter  from  different  points  of  view.  You  will  not 
quarrel  with  me  for  wanting  to  make  it  clear.  It  isn't  as  if  we 
differed  slightly.  We  differ  fundamentally — is  it  not  so  ? ' 

The  squire  was  walking  beside  him  with  bent  shoulders,  the 
lower  lip  pushed  forward,  as  was  usual  with  him  when  he  was 
considering  a  matter  with  close  attention,  but  did  not  mean  to 
communicate  his  thoughts. 

After  a  pause  he  said,  with  a  faint  inscrutable  smile, — 

'Your  reminder  is  perfectly  just.  Naturally  we  all  have  our 
reserves.  Neither  of  us  can  be  expected  to  stultify  his  own.' 

x 


306  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

And  the  talk  went  forward  again,  Robert  joining  in  more 
buoyantly  than  ever,  perhaps  because  he  had  achieved  a 
necessary  but  disagreeable  thing  and  got  done  with  it. 

Tn  reality  he  had  but  been  doing  as  the  child  does  when  it 
sets  up  its  sand-barrier  against  the  tide. 


CHAPTER  XXin 

IT  was  the  beginning  of  April.  The  gorse  was  fast  extending 
its  golden  empire  over  the  commons.  On  the  sunny  slopes  of 
the  copses  primroses  were  breaking  through  the  hazel  roots  and 
beginning  to  gleam  along  the  edges  of  the  river.  On  the  grass 
commons  between  Murewell  and  Mile  End  the  birches  rose  like 
green  clouds  against  the  browns  and  purples  of  the  still  leafless 
oaks  and  beeches.  The  birds  were  twittering  and  building. 
Every  day  Robert  was  on  the  look-out  for  the  swallows,  or 
listening  for  the  first  notes  of  the  nightingale  amid  the  bare 
spring  coverts. 

But  the  spring  was  less  perfectly  delightful  to  him  than  it 
might  have  been,  for  Catherine  was  away.  Mrs.  Leyburn,  who 
was  to  have  come  south  to  them  in  February,  was  attacked  by 
bronchitis  instead  at  Burwood  and  forbidden  to  move,  even  to  a 
warmer  climate.  In  March,  Catherine,  feeling  restless  and 
anxious  about  her  mother,  and  thinking  it  hard  that  Agnes 
should  have  all  the  nursing  and  responsibility,  tore  herself  from 
her  man  and  her  baby,  and  went  north  to  Whinclale  for  a 
fortnight,  leaving  Robert  forlorn. 

Now,  however,  she  was  in  London,  whither  she  had  gone  for 
a  few  days  on  her  way  home,  to  meet  Rose  and  to  shop. 
Robert's  opinion  was  that  all  women,  even  St.  Elizabeths,  have 
somewhere  rooted  in  them  an  inordinate  partiality  for  shopping ; 
otherwise  why  should  that  operation  take  four  or  five  mortal 
days  ?  Surely  with  a  little  energy,  one  might  buy  up  the  whole 
of  London  in  twelve  hours  !  However,  Catherine  lingered,  and 
as  her  purchases  were  made,  Robert  crossly  supposed  it  must  be 
all  Rose's  fault.  He  believed  that  Rose  spent  a  great  deal  too 
much  on  dress. 

Catherine's  letters,  of  course,  were  full  of  her  sister.  Rose, 
she  said,  had  come  back  from  Berlin  handsomer  than  ever,  and 
playing,  she  supposed,  magnificently.  At  any  rate,  the  letters 
which  followed  her  in  shoals  from  Berlin  flattered  her  to  the 
skies,  and  during  the  three  months  preceding  her  return  Joachim 
himself  had  taken  her  as  a  pupil  and  given  her  unusual  atten- 
tion. 

'And  now,  of  course,'  wrote  Catherine,  'she  is  desperately 
disappointed  that  mamma  and  Agnes  cannot  join  her  in  town, 
as  she  had  hoped.  She  does  her  best,  I  know,  poor  child,  to 
conceal  it  and  to  feel  as  she  ought  about  mamma,  but  I  can  see 


CHAP,  xxin  THE  SQUIRE  307 

that  the  idea  of  an  indefinite  time  at  Burwood  is  intolerable  to 
her.  As  to  Berlin,  I  think  she  has  enjoyed  it,  but  she  talks  very 
scornfully  of  German  Schwarmerei  and  German  women,  and  she 
tells  the  oddest  stories  of  her  professors.  With  one  or  two  of 
them  she  seems  to  have  been  in  a  state  of  war  from  the  begin- 
ning ;  but  some  of  them,  my  dear  Robert,  I  am  persuaded  were 
just  simply  in  love  with  her  ! 

'  I  don't-^no,  I  never  shall  believe,  that  independent  exciting 
student's  life  is  good  for  a  girl.  But  I  never  say  so  to  Rose. 
When  she  forgets  to  be  irritable  and  to  feel  that  the  world  is 

going  against  her,  she  is  often  very  sweet  to  me,  and  I  can't 
ear  there  should  be  any  conflict.' 

His  next  day's  letter  contained  the  following  : — 

'Are  you  properly  amused,  sir,  at  your  wife's  performances 
in  town  f  Our  three  concerts  you  have  heard  all  about.  I  still 
can't  get  over  them.  I  go  about  haunted  by  the  seriousness,  the 
life-and-death  interest  people  throw  into  music.  It  is  astonish- 
ing !  And  outside,  as  we  got  into  our  hansom,  such  sights 
and  sounds  ! — such  starved  fierce -looking  men,  such  ghastly 
women ! 

'  But  since  then  Rose  has  been  taking  me  into  society.  Yes- 
terday afternoon,  after  I  wrote  to  you,  we  went  to  see  Rose's 
artistic  friends — the  Piersons — with  whom  she  was  staying  last 
summer,  and  to-day  we  have  even  called  on  Lady  Charlotte 
Wynnstay. 

'As  to  Mrs.  Pierson,  I  never  saw  such  an  odd  bundle  of  rib- 
bons and  rags  and  queer  embroideries  as  she  looked  when  we 
called.  However,  Rose  says  that,  for  "  an  aesthete  " — she  despises 
them  now  herself — Mrs.  Pierson  has  wonderful  taste,  and  that 
her  wall-papers  and  her  gowns,  if  I  only  understood  them,  are 
not  the  least  like  those  of  other  aesthetic  persons,  but  very 
rechercM — which  may  be.  She  talked  to  Rose  of  nothing  but 
acting,  especially  of  Madame  Desfor6ts.  No  one,  according  to 
her,  has  anything  to  do  with  an  actress's  private  life,  or  ought 
to  take  it  into  account.  But,  Robert,  dear, — an  actress  is  a 
woman,  and  has  a  soul ! 

'Then  Lady  Charlotte, — you  would  have  laughed  at  our 
entree. 

'  We  found  she  was  in  town,  and  went  on  her  "  day,"  as  she 
had  asked  Rose  to  do.  The  room  was  rather  dark — none  of 
these  London  rooms  seem  to  me  to  have  any  light  and  air  in 
them.  The  butler  got  our  names  wrong,  and  I  marched  in  first, 
more  shy  than  I  ever  have  been  before  in  my  life.  Lady  Char- 
lotte had  two  gentlemen  with  her.  She  evidently  did  not  know 
me  in  the  least ;  she  stood  staring  at  me  with  her  eyeglass  on, 
and  her  cap  so  crooked  I  could  think  of  nothing  but  a  wish  to 
put  it  straight.  Then  Rose  followed,  and  in  a  few  minutes  it 
seemed  to  me  as  though  it  were  Rose  who  were  hostess,  talking 
to  the  two  gentlemen  and  being  kind  to  Lady  Charlotte.  I  am 
sure  everybody  in  the  room  was  amused  by  her  self-possession, 


308  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

Lady  Charlotte  included.  The  gentlemen  stared  at  her  a  great 
deal,  and  Lady  Charlotte  paid  her  one  or  two  compliments  on 
her  looks,  which  /  thought  she  would  not  have  ventured  to  pay 
to  any  one  in  her  own  circle. 

'  We  stayed  about  half  an  hour.  One  of  the  gentlemen  was, 
I  believe,  a  member  of  the  Government,  an  under-secretary  for 
something,  but  he  and  Rose  and  Lady  Charlotte  talked  again  of 
nothing  but  musicians  and  actors.  It  is  strange  that' politicians 
should  have  time  to  know  so  much  of  these  things.  The  other 
gentleman  reminded  me  of  Hotspur's  popinjay.  I  think  now  I 
made  out  that  he  wrote  for  the  newspapers,  but  at  the  moment 
I  should  have  felt  it  insulting  to  accuse  him  of  anything  so  hum- 
drum as  an  occupation  in  Life.  He  discovered  somehow  that 
I  had  an  interest  in  the  Church,  and  he  asked  me,  leaning 
back  in  his  chair  and  lisping,  whether  I  really  thought  "the 
Church  could  still  totter  on  a  while  in  the  rural  dithtricts."  He 
was  informed  her  condition  was  so  "  vewy  dethperate." 

'Then  I  laughed  outright,  and  found  my  tongue.  Perhaps 
his  next  article  on  the  Church  will  have  a  few  facts  in  it.  I  did 
my  best  to  put  some  into  him.  Rose  at  last  looked  round  at  me, 
astonished.  But  he  did  not  dislike  me,  I  think.  I  was  not 
impertinent  to  him,  husband  mine.  If  I  might  have  described 
just  one  of  your  days  to  his  high-and-mightiness  !  There  is  no 
need  to  tell  you,  I  think,  whether  I  did  or  not. 

'  Then  when  we  got  up  to  go,  Lady  Charlotte  asked  Rose  to 
stay  with  her.  Rose  explained  why  she  couldn't,  and  Lady 
Charlotte  pitied  her  dreadfully  for  having  a  family,  and  the 
under-secretary  said  that  it  was  one's  first  duty  in  life  to  trample 
on  one's  relations,  and  that  he  hoped  nothing  would  prevent  his 
hearing  her  play  some  time  later  in  the  year.  Rose  said  very 
decidedly  she  should  be  in  town  for  the  winter.  Lady  Char- 
lotte said  she  would  have  an  evening  specially  for  her,  and  as  I 
said  nothing,  we  got  away  at  last.' 

The  letter  of  the  following  day  recorded  a  little  adventure  : — 

'  I  was  much  startled  this  morning.  I  had  got  Rose  to  come 
with  me  to  the  National  Gallery  on  our  way  to  her  dressmaker. 
We  were  standing  before  Raphael's  "  Vigil  of  the  Knight,"  when 
suddenly  I  saw  Rose,  who  was  looking  away  towards  the  door 
into  the  long  gallery,  turn  perfectly  white.  I  followed  her  eyes, 
and  there,  in  the  doorway,  disappearing, — I  am  almost  certain, — 
was  Mr.  Langham !  One  cannot  mistake  his  walk  or  his  pro- 
file. Before  I  could  say  a  word  Rose  had  walked  away  to 
another  wall  of  pictures,  and  when  we  joined  again  we  did  not 
speak  of  it.  Did  he  see  us,  I  wonder,  and  purposely  avoid  us  i 
Something  made  me  think  so. 

'  Oh,  I  wish  I  could  believe  she  had  forgotten  him  !  I  am 
certain  she  would  laugh  me  to  angry  scorn  if  I  mentioned  him  ; 
but  there  she  sits  by  the  fire  now,  while  I  am  writing,  quite 
drooping  and  pale,  because  she  thinks  I  am  not  noticing.  If  she 
did  but  love  me  a  little  more  !  It  must  be  my  fault,  I  know. 


CHAP,  xxin  THE  SQUIRE  309 

'Yes,  as  you  say,  Burwood  may  as  well  be  shut  up  or  let. 
My  dear,  dear  father  ! ' 

Robert  could  imagine  the  sigh  with  which  Catherine  had  laid 
down  her  pen.  Dear  tender  soul,  with  all  its  old-world  fidelities 
and  pieties  pure  and  unimpaired  !  He  raised  the  signature  to 
his  lips. 

Next  day  Catherine  came  back  to  him.  Robert  had  no  words 
too  opprobrious  for  the  widowetl  condition  from  which  her 
return  had  rescued  him.  It  seemed  to  Catherine,  however,  that 
life  had  been  very  full  and  keen  with  him  since  her  departure  ! 
He  lingered  with  her  after  supper,  vowing  that  his  club  boys 
might  make  what  hay  in  the  study  they  pleased ;  he  was  going 
to  tell  her  the  news,  whatever  happened. 

'  I  told  you  of  my  two  dinners  at  the  Hall  ?  The  first  was  just 
tete-a-tete  with  the  squire — oh,  and  Mrs.  Darcy,  of  course.  I  am 
always  forgetting  her,  poor  little  thing,  which  is  most  ungrate- 
ful of  me.  A  pathetic  life  that,  Catherine.  She  seems  to  me,  in 
her  odd  way,  perpetually  hungering  for  affection,  for  praise. 
No  doubt,  if  she  got  them,  she  wouldn't  know  what  to  do  with 
them.  She  would  just  touch  and  leave  them  as  she  does  every- 
thing. Her  talk  and  she  are  both  as  light  and  wandering  as 
thistledown.  But  still,  meanwhile,  she  hungers,  and  is  never 
satisfied.  There  seems  to  be  something  peculiarly  antipathetic 
in  her  to  the  squire.  I  can't  make  it  out.  He  is  sometimes 
quite  brutal  to  her  when  she  is  more  inconsequent  than  usual. 
I  often  wonder  she  goes  on  living  with  him.' 

Catherine  made  some  indignant  comment. 

'  Yes,'  said  Robert,  musing.     '  Yes,  it  is  bad.'   • 

But  Catherine  thought  his  tone  might  have  been  more 
unqualified,  and  marvelled  again  at  the  curious  lenity  of  judg- 
ment he  had  always  shown  of  late  towards  Mr.  Wendover.  And 
all  his  judgments  of  himself  and  others  were  generally  so  quick, 
so  uncompromising ! 

'  On  the  second  occasion  we  had  Freake  and  Dash  wood,'  nam- 
ing two  well-known  English  antiquarians.  '  Very  learned,  very 
jealous,  and  very  snuffy ;  altogether  "too  genuine,"  as  poor 
mother  used  to  say  of  those  old  chairs  we  got  for  the  dining- 
room.  But  afterwards  when  we  were  all  smoking  in  the  library, 
the  squire  came  out  of  his  shell  and  talked.  I  never  heard  him 
more  brilliant ! ' 

He  paused  a  moment,  his  bright  eyes  looking  far  away  from 
her,  as  though  fixed  on  the  scene  he  was  describing. 

'  Such  a  mind  ! '  he  said  at  last  with  a  long  breath,  '  such  a 
memory !  Catherine,  my  book  has  been  making  great  strides 
since  you  left.  With  Mr.  Wendover  to  go  to,  all  the  prob- 
lems are  simplified.  One  is  saved  all  false  starts,  all  beating 
about  the  bush.  What  a  piece  of  luck  it  was  that  put  one 
down  beside  such  a  guide,  such  a  living  storehouse  of  know- 
ledge ! ' 

He  spoke  in  a  glow  of  energy  and  enthusiasm.     Catherine  sat 


310  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

looking  at  him  wistfully,  her  gray  eyes  crossed  by  many  varying 
shades  of  memory  and  feeling. 

At  last  his  look  met  hers,  and  the  animation  of  it  softened 
at  once,  grew  gentle. 

'  Do  you  think  I  am  making  knowledge  too  much  of  a  god 
just  now,  Madonna  mine?'  he  said,  throwing  himself  down 
beside  her.  '  I  have  been  full  of  qualms  myself.  The  squire 
excites  one  so,  makes  one  feefcas  though  intellect — accumulation 
— were  the  whole  of  life.  But  I  struggle  against  it — I  do.  I  go 
on,  for  instance,  trying  to  make  the  squire  do  his  social  duties — 
behave  like  "  a  human." ' 

Catherine  could  not  help  smiling  at  his  tone. 

'  Well  ? '  she  inquired. 

He  shook  his  head  ruefully. 

'  The  squire  is  a  tough  customer — most  men  of  sixty-seven 
with  strong  wills  are,  I  suppose.  At  any  rate,  he  is  like  one  of 
the  Thurston  trout — sees  through  all  my  manreuvres.  But  one 
piece  of  news  will  astonish  you,  Catherine  ! '  And  he  sprang  up 
to  deliver  it  with  effect.  '  Henslowe  is  dismissed.' 

'  Henslowe  dismissed  ! '  Catherine  sat  properly  amazed  while 
Robert  told  the  story. 

The  dismissal  of  Henslowe  indeed  represented  the  price  which 
Mr.  Wendover  had  been  so  far  willing  to  pay  for  Elsmere's 
society.  Some  quid  pro  quo  there  must  be — that  he  was  pre- 
pared to  admit — considering  their  relative  positions  as  squire 
and  parson.  But,  as  Robert  shrewdly  suspected,  not  one  of  his 
wiles  so  far  had  imposed  on  the  master  of  Murewell.  He  had 
his  own  sarcastic  smiles  over  them,  and  over  Elsmere's  pastoral 
ndivetd  in  general.  The  evidences  of  the  young  rector's  power 
and  popularity  were,  however,  on  the  whole,  pleasant  to  Mr. 
Wendover.  If  Elsmere  had  his  will  with  all  the  rest  of  the 
world,  Mr.  Wendover  knew  perfectly  well  who  it  was  that  at 
the  present  moment  had  his  will  with  Elsmere.  He  had  found 
a  great  piquancy  in  this  shaping  of  a  mind  more  intellectually 
eager  and  pliant  than  any  he  had  yet  come  across  among  younger 
men ;  perpetual  food  too,  for  his  sense  of  irony,  in  the  intel- 
lectual contradictions,  wherein  Elsmere's  developing  ideas  and 
information  were  now,  according  to  the  squire,  involving  him 
at  every  turn. 

'His  religious  foundations  are  gone  already,  if  he  did  but 
know  it,|  Mr.  Wendover  grimly  remarked  to  himself  one  day 
about  this  time,  '  but  he  will  take  so  long  finding  it  out  that  the 
results  are  not  worth  speculating  on.' 

Cynically  assured,  therefore,  at  bottom  of  his  own  power 
with  this  ebullient  nature,  the  squire  was  quite  prepared  to 
make  external  concessions,  or,  as  we  have  said,  to  pay  his  price. 
It  annoyed  him  that  when  Elsmere  would  press  for  allotment 
land,  or  a  new  institute,  or  a  better  supply  of  water  for  the 
village,  it  was  not  open  to  him  merely  to  give  carte  blanche,  and 
refer  his  petitioner  to  Henslowe.  Robert's  opinion  of  Henslowe, 


CHAP,  xxin  THE  SQUIRE  811 

and  HensloWs  now  more  cautious  but  still  incessant  hostility 
to  the  rector,  were  patent  at  last  even  to  the  squire.  The 
situation  was  worrying  and  wasted  time.  It  must  be  changed. 

So  one  morning  he  met  Elsmere  with  a  bundle  of  letters  in 
his  hand,  calmly  informed  him  that  Henslowe  had  been  sent 
about  his  business,  and  that  it  would  be  a  kindness  if  Mr. 
Elsmere  would  do  him  the  favour  of  looking  through  some 
applications  for  the  vacant  post  just  received. 

Elsmere,  much  taken  by  surprise,  felt  at  first  as  it  was  natural 
for  an  over-sensitive,  over-scrupulous  man  to  feel.  His  enemy 
had  been  given  into  his  hand,  and  instead  of  victory  he  could 
only  realise  that  he  had  brought  a  man  to  ruin. 

'  He  has  a  wife  and  children,'  he  said  quickly,  looking  at  the 
squire. 

'  Of  course  I  have  pensioned  him,'  replied  the  squire  impa- 
tiently ;  '  otherwise  I  imagine  he  would  be  hanging  round  our 
necks  to  the  end  of  the  chapter.' 

There  was  something  in  the  careless  indifference  of  the  tone 
which  sent  a  shiver  through  Elsmere.  After  all,  this  man  had 
served  the  squire  for  fifteen  years,  and  it  was  not  Mr.  Wendover 
who  had  much  to  complain  of. 

No  one  with  a  conscience  could  have  held  out  a  finger  to  keep 
Henslowe  in  his  post.  But  though  Elsmere  took  the  letters  and 
promised  to  give  them  his  best  attention,  as  soon  as  he  got  home 
he  made  himself  irrationally  miserable  over  the  matter.  It  was 
not  his  fault  that,  from  the  moment  of  his  arrival  in  the  parish, 
Henslowe  had  made  him  the  target  of  a  vulgar  and  embittered 
hostility,  and  so  far  as  he  had  struck  out  in  return  it  had  been 
for  the  protection  of  persecuted  and  defenceless  creatures.  But 
all  the  same,  he  could  not  get  the  thought  of  the  man's  collapse 
and  humiliation  out  of  his  mind.  How  at  his  age  was  he  to  find 
other  work,  and  how  was  he  to  endure  life  at  Murewell  without 
his  comfortable  house,  his  smart  gig,  his  easy  command  of  spirits, 
and  the  cringing  of  the  farmers? 

Tormented  by  the  sordid  misery  of  the  situation  almost  as 
though  it  had  been  his  own,  Elsmere  ran  down  impulsively  in 
the  evening  to  the  agent's  house.  Could  nothing  be  done  to 
assure  the  man  that  he  was  not  really  his  enemy,  and  that  any- 
thing the  parson's  influence  and  the  parson's  money  could  do 
to  help  him  to  a  more  decent  life,  and  work  which  offered 
fewer  temptations  and  less  power  over  human  beings,  should 
be  done  ? 

It  need  hardly  be  said  that  the  visit  was  a  complete  failure. 
Henslowe,  who  was  drinking  hard,  no  sooner  heard  Elsmere's 
voice  in  the  little  hall  than  he  dashed  open  the  door  which 
separated  them,  and,  in  a  paroxysm  of  drunken  rage,  hurled  at 
Elsmere  all  the  venomous  stuff  he  had  been  garnering  up  for 
months  against  some  such  occasion.  The  vilest  abuse,  the  foulest 
charges — there  was  nothing  that  the  maddened  sot,  now  fairly 
unmasked,  denied  himself.  Elsmere,  pale  and  erect,  tried  to 


312  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  ill 

make  himself  heard.  In  vain.  Henslowe  was  physically  in- 
capable of  taking  in  a  word. 

At  last  the  agent,  beside  himself,  made  a  rush,  his  three 
untidy  children,  who  had  been  hanging  open-mouthed  in  the 
background,  set  up  a  howl  of  terror,  and  his  Scotch  wife,  more 
pinched  and  sour  than  ever,  who  had  been  so  far  a  gloomy 
spectator  of  the  scene,  interposed. 

'  Have  doon  wi'  ye,'  she  said  sullenly,  putting  out  a  long  bony 
arm  in  front  of  her  husband,  'or  I'll  just  lock  oop  that  brandy 
where  ye'll  naw  find  it  if  ye  pull  the  house  doon.  Now,  sir,' 
turning  to  Elsmere,  '  would  ye  jest  be  going  ?  Ye  mean  it  weel, 
I  daur  say,  but  ye've  doon  yer  wark,  and  ye  maun  leave  it.' 

And  she  motioned  him  out,  not  without  a  sombre  dignity., 
Elsmere  went  home  crestfallen.  The  enthusiast  is  a  good  deal 
too  apt  to  under-estimate  the  stubbornness  of  moral  fact,  and 
these  rebuffs  have  their  stern  uses  for  character. 

'  They  intend  to  go  on  living  here,  I  am  told,'  Elsmere  said, 
as  he  wound  up  the  story,  'and  as  Henslowe  is  still  church- 
warden, he  may  do  us  a  world  of  mischief  yet.  However,  I 
think  that  wife  will  keep  him  in  order.  No  doubt  vengeance 
would  be  sweet  to  her  as  to  him,  but  she  has  a  shrewd  eye,  poor 
soul,  to  the  squire's  remittances.  It  is  a  wretched  business,  and 
I  don't  take  a  man's  hate  easily,  Catherine  ! — though  it  may  be 
a  folly  to  say  so.' 

Catherine  was  irresponsive.  The  Old  Testament  element  in 
her  found  a  lawful  satisfaction  in  Henslowe's  fall,  and  a  wicked 
man's  hatred,  according  to  her,  mattered  only  to  himself.  The 
squire's  conduct,  on  the  other  hand,  made  her  uneasily  proud. 
To  her,  naturally,  it  simply  meant  that  he  was  falling  under 
Robert's  spell.  So  much  the  better  for  him,  but 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

THAT  same  afternoon  Robert  started  on  a  walk  to  a  distant 
farm,  where  one  of  his  Sunday-school  boys  lay  recovering  from 
rheumatic  fever.  "The  rector  had  his  pocket  full  of  articles — a 
story-book  in  one,  a  puzzle  map  in  the  other — destined  for 
Master  Carter's  amusement.  On  the  way  he  was  to  pick  up 
Mr.  Wendover  at  the  park  gates. 

It  was  a  delicious  April  morning.     A  soft  west  wind  blew 
through  leaf  and  grass — 

'  Driving  sweet  buds,  like  flocks,  to  feed  in  air. ' 

The  spring  was  stirring  everywhere,  and  Robert  raced  along, 
feeling  in  every  vein  a  life,  an  ebullience  akin  to  that  of  nature. 
As  he  neared  the  place  of  meeting  it  occurred  to  him  that  the 
squire  had  been  unusually  busy  lately,  unusually  silent  and 
absent  too  on  their  walks.  What  ivas  he  always  at  work  on  ? 


CHAP,  xxiv  THE  SQUIRE  313 

Robert  had  often  inquired  of  him  as  to  the  nature  of  those  piles 
of  proof  and  manuscript  with  which  his  table  was  littered.  The 
squire  had  never  given  any  but  the  most  general  answer,  and 
had  always  changed  the  subject.  There  was  an  invincible 
personal  reserve  about  him  which,  through  all  his  walks  and 
talks  with  Elsmere,  had  never  as  yet  broken  down.  He  would 
talk  of  other  men  and  other  men's  labours  by  the  hour,  but  not 
of  his  own.  Elsmere  reflected  on  the  fact,  mingling  with  the 
reflection  a  certain  humorous  scorn  of  his  own  constant  openness 
and  readiness  to  take  counsel  with  the  world. 

'However,  his  book  isn't  a  mere  excuse,  as  Langham's  is,' 
Elsmere  inwardly  remarked.  'Langham,  in  a  certain  sense, 
plays  even  with  learning  ;  Mr.  Wendover  plays  at  nothing.' 

By  the  way,  he  had  a  letter  from  Langham  in  his  pocket 
much  more  cheerful  and  human  than  usual.  Let  him  look 
through  it  again. 

Not  a  word,  of  course,  of  that  National  Gallery  experience  ! — 
a  circumstance,  however,  which  threw  no  light  on  it  either  way. 

'  I  find  myself  a  good  deal  reconciled  to  life  by  this  migration 
of  mine,'  wrote  Langham.  'Now  that  my  enforced  duties  to 
them  are  all  done  with,  my  fellow-creatures  seem  to  me  much 
more  decent  fellows  than  before.  The  great  stir  of  London,  in 
which,  unless  I  please,  I  have  no  part  whatever,  attracts'  me 
more  than  I  could  have  thought  possible.  No  one  in  these  noisy 
streets  has  any  rightful  claim  upon  me.  I  have  cut  away  at 
one  stroke  lectures,  and  Boards  of  Studies,  and  tutors'  meetings, 
and  all  the  rest  of  the  wearisome  Oxford  make-believe,  and  the 
creature  left  behind  feels  lighter  and  nimbler  than  he  has  felt 
for  years.  I  go  to  concerts  and  theatres ;  I  look  at  the  people 
in  the  streets ;  I  even  begin  to  take  an  outsider's  interest  in 
social  questions,  in  the  puny  dykes  which  well-meaning  people 
are  trying  to  raise  all  round  us  against  the  encroaching,  devas- 
tating labour-troubles  of  the  future.  By  dint  of  running  away 
from  life,  I  may  end  by  cutting  a  much  more  passable  figure  in 
it  than  before.  Be  consoled,  my  dear  Elsmere ;  reconsider  your 
remonstrances.' 

There,  under  the  great  cedar  by  the  gate,  stood  Mr.  Wendover. 
Illumined  as  he  was  by  the  spring  sunshine,  he  struck  Elsmere 
as  looking  unusually  shrunken  and  old.  And  yet  under  the 
look  of  physical  exhaustion  there  was  a  new  serenity,  almost  a 
peacef ulness  of  expression,  which  gave  the  whole  man  a  different 
aspect. 

'Don't  take  me  far,'  he  said  abruptly,  as  they  started.  'I 
have  not  got  the  energy  for  it.  I  have  been  over- working,  and 
must  go  away.' 

'  I  have  been  sure  of  it  for  some  time,'  said  Elsmere  warmly. 
'You  ought  to  have  a  long  rest.  But  mayn't  I  know,  Mr. 
Wendover,  before  you  take  it,  what  this  great  task  is  you  have 
been  toiling  at  ?  Remember,  you  have  never  told  me  a  word  of  it. 


314  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

And  Elsmere's  smile  had  in  it  a  touch  of  most  friendly 
reproach.  Fatigue  had  left  the  scholar  relaxed,  comparatively 
defenceless.  His  sunk  and  wrinkled  eyes  lit  up  with  a  smile, 
faint  indeed,  but  of  unwonted  softness. 

'  A  task  indeed,'  he  said  with  a  sigh,  '  the  task  of  a  lifetime. 
To-day  I  finished  the  second  third  of  it.  Probably  before  the 
last  section  is  begun  some  interloping  German  will  have  stepped 
down  before  me  ;  it  is  the  way  of  the  race  !  But  for  the  moment 
there  is  the  satisfaction  of  having  come  to  an  end  of  some  sort 
— a  natural  halt,  at  any  rate.' 

Elsmere's  eyes  were  still  interrogative.  '  Oh,  well,'  said  the 
squire  hastily,  'it  is  a  book  I  planned  just  after  I  took  my 
doctor's  degree  at  Berlin.  It  struck  me  then  as  the  great  want 
of  modern  scholarship.  It  is  a  History  of  Evidence,  or  rather, 
more  strictly,  "  A  History  of  Testimony." ' 

Robert  started.  The  library  flashed  into  his  mind,  and  Lang- 
ham's  figure  in  the  long  gray  coat  sitting  on  the  stool. 

'A  great  subject,'  he  said  slowly,  'a  magnificent  subject. 
How  have  you  conceived  it,  I  wonder  ? ' 

'Simply  from  the  standpoint  of  evolution,  of  development. 
The  philosophical  value  of  the  subject  is  enormous.  You  must 
have  considered  it,  of  course ;  every  historian  must.  But  few 
people  have  any  idea  in  detail  of  the  amount  of  light  which  the. 
history  of  human  witness  in  the  world,  systematically  carried 
through,  throws  on  the  history  of  the  human  mind ;  that  is  to 
say,  on  the  history  of  ideas.' 

The  squire  paused,  his  keen  scrutinising  look  dwelling  on  the 
face  beside  him,  as  though  to  judge  whether  he  were  understood. 

'  Oh,  true  ! '  cried  Elsmere ;  '  most  true.  Now  I  know  what 
vague  want  it  is  that  has  been  haunting  me  for  months 

He  stopped  short,  his  look,  aglow  with  all  the  young  thinker's 
ardour,  fixed  on  the  squire. 

The  squire  received  the  outburst  in  silence — a  somewhat 
ambiguous  silence. 

'  But  go  on,'  said  Elsmere  ;  '  please  go  on.' 

'Well,  you  remember,'  said  the  squire  slowly,  'that  when 
Tractarianism  began  I  was  for  a  time  one  of  Newman's  victims. 
Then,  when  Newman  departed,  I  went  over  body  and  bones 
to  the  Liberal  reaction  which  followed  his  going.  In  the  first 
ardour  of  what  seemed  to  me  a  release  from  slavery  I  migrated 
to  Berlin,  in  search  of  knowledge  which  there  was  no  getting  in 
England,  and  there,  with  the  taste  of  a  dozen  aimless  theological 
controversies  still  in  my  mouth,  this  idea  first  took  hold  of  me. 
It  was  simply  this  : — Could  one  through  an  exhaustive  exam- 
ination of  human  records,  helped  by  modern  physiological  and 
mental  science,  get  at  the  conditions,  physical  and  mental, 
which  govern  the  greater  or  lesser  correspondence  between 
human  witness  and  the  fact  it  reports  ? ' 

1 A  giant's  task  ! '  cried  Robert :  'hardly  conceivable  ! ' 

The  squire  smiled  slightly — the  smile  of  a  man  who  looks 


CHAP,  xxiv  THE  SQUIRE  315 

back  with  indulgent  half-melancholy  satire  on  the  rash  ambi- 
tions of  liis  youth. 

'  Naturally,'  he  resumed,  '  I  soon  saw  I  must  restrict  myself 
to  European  testimony,  and  that  only  up  to  the  Renaissance. 
To  do  that,  of  course,  I  had  to  dig  into  the  East,  to  learn  several 
Oriental  languages — Sanskrit  among  them.  Hebrew  I  already 
knew.  Then,  when  I  had  got  my  languages,  I  began  to  work 
steadily  through  the  whole  mass  of  existing  records,  sifting  and 
comparing.  It  is  thirty  years  since  I  started.  Fifteen  years 
ago  I  finished  the  section  dealing  with  classical  antiquity — with 
India,  Persia,  Egypt,  and  Judsea.  To-day  I  have  put  the  last 
strokes  to  a  History  of  Testimony  from  the  Christian  era  down 
to  the  sixth  century — from  Livy  to  Gregory  of  Tours,  from 
Augustus  to  Justinian.' 

Elsmere  turned  to  him  with  wonder,  with  a  movement  of 
irrepressible  homage.  Thirty  years  of  unbroken  solitary  labour 
for  one  end,  one  cause !  In  our  hurried  fragmentary  life,  a 
purpose  of  this  tenacity,  this  power  of  realising  itself,  strikes 
the  imagination. 

'  And  your  two  books  ? ' 

'  Were  a  mere  interlude,'  replied  the  squire  briefly.  '  After 
the  completion  of  the  first  part  of  my  work,  there  were  certain 
deposits  left  in  me  which  it  was  a  relief  to  get  rid  of,  especially 
in  connection  with  my  renewed  impressions  of  England,'  he 
added  drily. 

Elsmere  was  silent,  thinking  this  then  was  the  explanation 
of  the  squire's  minute  and  exhaustive  knowledge  of  the  early 
Christian  centuries,  a  knowledge  into  which — apart  from  certain 
forbidden  topics — he  had  himself  dipped  so  freely.  Suddenly, 
as  he  mused,  there  awoke  in  the  young  man  a  new  hunger,  a 
new  unmanageable  impulse  towards  frankness  of  speech.  All 
his  nascent  intellectual  powers  were  alive  and  clamorous.  For 
the  moment  his  past  reticences  and  timidities  looked  to  him 
absurd.  The  mind  rebelled  against  the  barriers  it  had  been 
rearing  against  itself.  It  rushed  on  to  sweep  them  away,  crying 
out  that  all  this  shrinking  from  free  discussion  had  been  at 
bottom  '  a  mere  treason  to  faith.' 

'  Naturally,  Mr.  Wendover,'  he  said  at  last,  and  his  tone  had 
a  half -defiant,  half-nervous  energy,  '  you  have  given  your  best 
attention  all  these  years  to  the  Christian  problems.' 

'Naturally,'  said  the  squire  drily.  Then,  as  his  companion 
still  seemed  to  wait,  keenly  expectant,  he  resumed,  with  some- 
thing cynical  in  the  smile  which  accompanied  the  words, — 

'  But  I  have  no  wish  to  infringe  our  convention.' 

'  A  convention  was  it  ? '  replied  Elsmere,  flushing.  '  I  think 
I  only  wanted  to  make  my  own  position  clear  and  prevent  mis- 
understanding. But  it  is  impossible  that  I  should  be  indifferent 
to  the  results  of  thirty  years  such  work  as  you  can  give  to  so 
great  a  subject.' 

The  squire  drew  himself  up  a  little  under  his  cloak  and 


316  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

seemed  to  consider.  His  tired  eyes,  fixed  on  the  spring  lane 
before  them,  saw  in  reality  only  the  long  retrospects  of  the  past. 
Then  a  light  broke  in  them,  transformed  them — a  light  of  battle. 
He  turned  to  the  man  beside  him,  and  his  sharp  look  swept  over 
him  from  head  to  foot.  Well,  if  he  would  have  it,  let  him  have 
it.  He  had  been  contemptuously  content  so  far  to  let  the  sub- 
ject be.  But  Mr.  Wendover,  in  spite  of  his  philosophy,  had 
never  been  proof  all  his  life  against  an  anti-clerical  instinct 
worthy  almost  of  a  Paris  municipal  councillor.  In  spite  of  his 
fatigue  there  woke  in  him  a  kind  of  cruel  whimsical  pleasure 
at  the  notion  of  speaking,  once  for  all,  what  he  conceived  to  be 
the  whole  bare  truth  to  this  clever  attractive  dreamer,  to  the 
young  fellow  who  thought  he  could  condescend  to  science  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  Christian  miracles  ! 

'  Results  ? '  he  said  interrogatively.  '  Well,  as  you  will  under- 
stand, it  is  tolerably  difficult  to  summarise  such  a  mass  at  a 
moment's  notice.  But  I  can  give  you  the  lines  of  my  last 
volumes,  if  it  would  interest  you  to  hear  them.' 

That  walk  prolonged  itself  far  beyond  Mr.  Wendover's 
original  intention.  There  was  something  in  the  situation,  in 
Elsmere's  comments,  or  arguments,  or  silences,  which  after  a 
while  banished  the  scholar's  sense  01  exhaustion  and  made  him 
oblivious  of  the  country  distances.  No  man  feels  another's  soul 
quivering  and  struggling  in  his  grasp  without  excitement,  let 
his  nerve  and  his  self-restraint  be  what  they  may. 

As  for  Elsmere,  that  hour  and  a  half,  little  as  he  realised  it 
at  the  time,  represented  the  turning-point  of  life.  He  listened, 
he  suggested,  he  put  in  an  acute  remark  here,  an  argument 
there,  such  as  the  squire  had  often  difficulty  in  meeting.  Every 
now  and  then  the  inner  protest  of  an  attacked  faith  would 
break  through  in  words  so  full  of  poignancy,  in  imagery  so 
dramatic,  that  the  squire's  closely-knit  sentences  would  be  for 
the  moment  wholly  disarranged.  On  the  whole,  he  proved  him- 
self no  mean  guardian  of  all  that  was  most  sacred  to  himself 
and  to  Catherine,  and  the  squire's  intellectual  respect  for  him 
rose  considerably. 

All  the  same,  by  the  end  of  their  conversation  that  first 
period  of  happy  unclouded  youth  we  have  been  considering  was 
over  for  poor  Elsmere.  In  obedience  to  certain  inevitable  laws 
and  instincts  of  the  mind,  he  had  been  for  months  tempting  his 
fate,  inviting  catastrophe.  None  the  less  did  the  first  sure 
approaches  of  that  catastrophe  fill  him  with  a  restless  resistance 
which  was  in  itself  anguish. 

As  to  the  squire's  talk,  it  was  simply  the  outpouring  of 
one  of  the  richest,  most  sceptical,  and  most  highly-trained  of 
minds  on  the  subject  of  Christian  origins.  At  no  previous 
period  of  his  life  would  it  have  greatly  affected  Elsmere.  But 
now  at  every  step  the  ideas,  impressions,  arguments  bred 
in  him  by  his  months  of  historical  work  and  ordinary  converse 
with  the  squire  rushed  in,  as  they  had  done  once  before,  to 


CHAP,  xxiv  THE  SQUIRE  317 

cripple  resistance,  to  check   an  emerging  answer,  to  justify 
Mr.  Wendover. 

We  may  quote  a  few  fragmentary  utterances  taken  almost  at 
random  from  the  long  wrestle  of  the  two  men,  for  the  sake  of 
indicating  the  main  lines  of  a  bitter  after-struggle. 

'Testimony  like  every  other  human  product  has  developed. 
Man's  power  of  apprehending  and  recording  what  he  sees  and 
hears  has  grown  from  less  to  more,  from  weaker  to  stronger, 
like  any  other  of  his  faculties,  just  as  the  reasoning  powers  of 
the  cave-dweller  have  developed  into  the  reasoning  powers  of  a 
Kant.  What  one  wants  is  the  ordered  proof  of  this,  and  it  can 
be  got  from  history  and  experience.' 

'To  plunge  into  the  Christian  period  without  haying  first 
cleared  the  mind  as  to  what  is  meant  in  history  and  literature 
by  "  the  critical  method,"  which  in  history  may  be  defined  as 
the  "science  of  what  is  credible,"  and  in  literature  as  "the 
science  of  what  is  rational,"  is  to  invite  fiasco.  The  theologian 
in  such  a  state  sees  no  obstacle  to  accepting  an  arbitrary  list  of 
documents  with  all  the  strange  stuff  they  may  contain,  and 
declaring  them  to  be  sound  historical  material,  while  he  applies 
to  all  the  strange  stuff  of  a  similar  kind  surrounding  them  the 
most  rigorous  principles  of  modern  science.  Or  he  has  to  make 
believe  that  the  reasoning  processes  exhibited  in  the  speeches 
of  the  Acts,  in  certain,  passages  of  St.  Paul's  Epistles,  or  in  the 
Old  Testament  quotations  in  the  Gospels,  have  a  validity  for  the 
mind  of  the  nineteenth  century,  when  in  truth  they  are  the 
imperfect,  half -childish  products  of  the  mind  of  the  first 
century,  of  quite  insignificant  or  indirect  value  to  the  his- 
torian of  fact,  of  enormous  value  to  the  historian  of  testimony 
and  its  varieties.' 

'Suppose,  for  instance,  before  I  begin  to  deal  with  the 
Christian  story,  and  the  earliest  Christian  development,  I  try 
to  make  out  beforehand  what  are  the  moulds,  the  channels  into 
which  the  testimony  of  the  time  must  run.  I  look  for  these 
moulds,  of  course,  in  the  dominant  ideas,  the  intellectual  pre- 
conceptions and  preoccupations  existing  when  the  period 
begins. 

'  In  the  first  place,  I  shall  find  present  in  the  age  which  saw 
the  birth  of  Christianity,  as  in  so  many  other  ages,  a  universal 
preconception  in  favour  of  miracle — that  is  to  say,  of  deviations 
from  the  common  norm  of  experience,  governing  the  work  of 
all  men  of  all  schools.  Very  well,  allow  for  it  then.  Read  the 
testimony  of  the  period  in  the  light  of  it.  Be  prepared  for  the 
inevitable  differences  between  it  and  the  testimony  of  your  own 
day.  The  witness  of  the  time  is  not  true,  nor,  in  the  strict 
sense,  false.  It  is  merely  incompetent,  half -trained,  pre- 
scientific,  but  all  through  perfectly  natural  The  wonder  would 


318  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

have  been  to  have  had  a  life  of  Christ  without  miracles.  The 
air  teems  with  them.  The  East  is  full  of  Messiahs.  Even  a 
Tacitus  is  superstitious.  Even  a  Vespasian  works  miracles. 
Even  a,  Nero  cannot  die,  but  fifty  years  after  his  death  is  still 
looked  for  as  the  inaugurator  of  a  millennium  of  horror.  The 
Resurrection  is  partly  invented,  partly  imagined,  partly  ideally 
true — in  any  case  wholly  intelligible  and  natural,  as  a  product 
of  the  age,  when  once  you  have  the  key  of  that  age. 

'  In  the  next  place,  look  for  the  preconceptions  that  have  a 
definite  historical  origin  j  those,  for  instance,  flowing  from  the 
pre-Christian,  apocalyptic  literature  of  the  Jews,  taking  the 
Maccabean  legend  of  T)aniel  as  the  centre  of  inquiry — those 
flowing  from  Alexandrian  Judaism  and  the  school  of  Philo — 
those  flowing  from  the  Palestinian  schools  of  exegesis.  Examine 
your  synoptic  gospels,  your  Gospel  of  St.  John,  your  Apocalypse, 
in  the  light  of  these.  You  have  no  other  chance  of  understand- 
ing them.  But  so  examined,  they  fall  into  place,  become 
explicable  and  rational ;  such  material  as  science  can  make  full 
use  of.  The  doctrine  of  the  Divinity  of  Christ,  Christian 
eschatology,  and  Christian  views  of  prophecy  will  also  have 
found  their  place  in  a  sound  historical  scheme  ! ' 

'  It  is  discreditable  now  for  the  man  of  intelligence  to  refuse 
to  read  his  Livy  in  the  light  of  his  Mommsen.  My  object  has 
been  to  help  in  making  it  discreditable  to  him  to  refuse  to  read 
his  Christian  documents  in  the  light  of  a  trained  scientific 
criticism.  We  shall  have  made  some  positive  advance  in 
rationality  when  the  man  who  is  perfectly  capable  of  dealing 
sanely  with  legend  in  one  connection,  and,  in  another,  will 
insist  on  confounding  it  with  history  proper,  cannot  do  so  any 
longer  without  losing  caste,  without  falling  ipso  facto  out  of 
court  with  men  of  education.  It  is  enough  for  a  man  of  letters 
if  he  has  helped  ever  so  little  in  the  final  staking  out  of  the 
boundaries  between  reason  and  unreason  ! ' 

And  so  on.  These  are  mere  ragged  gleanings  from  an  ample 
store.  The  discussion  in  reality  ranged  over  the  whole  field  of 
history,  plunged  into  philosophy,  and  into  the  subtlest  problems 
of  mind.  At  the  end  of  it,  after  he  had  been  conscious  for  many 
bitter  moments  of  that  same  constriction  of  heart  which  had 
overtaken  him  once  before  at  Mr.  Wendoyer's  hands,  the 
religious  passion  in  Elsmere  once  more  rose  with  sudden  stub- 
born energy  against  the  iron  negations  pressed  upon  it. 

'  I  will  not  fight  you  any  more,  Mr.  Wendover,'  he  said,  with 
his  moved  flashing  look.  'I  am  perfectly  conscious  that  my 
own  mental  experience  of  the  last  two  years  has  made  it 
necessary  to  re-examine  some  of  these  intellectual  foundations 
of  faith.  But  as  to  the  faith  itself,  that  is  its  own  witness.  It 
does  not  depend,  after  all,  upon  anything  external,  but  upon  the 
living  voice  of  the  Eternal  in  the  soul  of  man  ! ' 


CHAP,  xxiv  THE  SQUIRE  319 

Involuntarily  his  pace  quickened.  The  whole  man  was 
gathered  into  one  great,  useless,  pitiful  defiance,  and  the  outer 
world  was  forgotten.  The  squire  kept  up  with  difficulty  a  while, 
a  faint  glimmer  of  sarcasm  playing  now  and  then  round  the 
straight  thin-lipped  mouth.  Then  suddenly  he  stopped. 

'No,  let  it  be.  Forget  me  and  my  book,  Elsmere.  Every- 
thing can  be  got  out  of  in  this  world.  By  the  way,  we  seem  to 
have  reached  the  ends  of  the  earth.  Those  are  the  new  Mile 
End  cottages,  I  believe.  With  your  leave,  I'll  sit  down  in  one 
of  them,  and  send  to  the  Hall  for  the  carriage.' 

Elsmere's  repentant  attention  was  drawn  at  once  to  his 
companion. 

'I  am  a  selfish  idiot,'  he  said  hotly,  'to  have  led  you  into 
over-walking  and  over-talking  like  this.' 

The  squire  made  some  short  reply  and  instantly  turned  the 
matter  off.  The  momentary  softness  which  had  marked  his 
meeting  with  Elsmere  had  entirely  vanished,  leaving  only  the 
Mr.  Wendover  of  every  day,  who  was  merely  made  awkward 
and  unapproachable  by  the  slightest  touch  of  personal  sym- 
pathy. No  living  being,  certainly  not  his  foolish  little  sister, 
had  any  right  to  take  care  of  the  squire.  And  as  the  signs  of 
age  became  more  apparent,  this  one  fact  had  often  worked 
powerfully  on  the  sympathies  of  Elsmere's  chivalrous  youth, 
though  as  yet  he  had  been  no  more  capable  than  any  one  else 
of  breaking  through  the  squire's  haughty  reserve. 

As  they  turned  down  the  newly- worn  track  to  the  cottages, 
whereof  the  weekly  progress  had  been  for  some  time  the  delight 
of  Elsmere's  heart,  they  met  old  Meyrick  in  his  pony-carriage. 
He  stopped  his  shambling  steed  at  sight  of  the  pair.  The 
bleared  spectacled  eyes  lit  up,  the  prim  mouth  broke  into  a 
smile  which  matched  the  April  sun. 

'  Well,  Squire ;  well,  Mr.  Elsmere,  are  you  going  to  have  a 
look  at  those  places  ?  Never  saw  such  palaces.  I  only  hope  I 
may  end  my  days  in  anything  so  good.  Will  you  give  me  a 
lease,  Squire  ? ' 

Mr.  Wendover's  deep  eyes  took  a  momentary  survey,  half 
indulgent,  half  contemptuous,  of  the  naive,  awkward -looking 
old  creature  in  the  pony-carriage.  Then,  without  troubling  to 
find  an  answer,  he  went  his  way. 

Robert  stayed  chatting  a  moment  or  two,  knowing  perfectly 
well  what  Meyrick's  gay  garrulity  meant.  A  sharp  and  bitter 
sense  of  the  ironies  of  life  swept  across  him.  The  squire 
humanised,  influenced  by  him — he  knew  that  was  the  image 
in  Meyrick's  mind ;  he  remembered  with  a  quiet  scorn  its  pres- 
ence in  his  own.  And  never,  never  had  he  felt  his  own  weak- 
ness and  the  strength  of  that  grim  personality  so  much  as  at 
that  instant. 

That  evening  Catherine  noticed  an  unusual  silence  and  de- 
pression in  Robert.  She  did  her  best  to  cheer  it  away,  to 
get  at  the  cause  of  it.  In  vain.  At  last,  with  her  usual  wise 


320  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

tenderness,  she  left  him  alone,  conscious  herself,  as  she  closed  the 
study  door  behind  her,  of  a  momentary  dreariness  of  soul,  coming 
she  knew  not  whence,  and  only  dispersed  by  the  instinctive 
upward  leap  of  prayer. 

Robert  was  no  sooner  alone  than  he  put  down  his  pipe  and 
sat  brooding  over  the  fire.  All  the  long  debate  of  the  afternoon 
began  to  fight  itself  out  again  in  the  shrinking  mind.  Sud- 
denly, in  his  restless  pain,  a  thought  occurred  to  him.  He  had 
been  much  struck  in  the  squire's  conversation  by  certain  allu- 
sions to  arguments  drawn  from  the  Book  of  Daniel.  It  was 
not  a  subject  with  which  Robert  had  any  great  familiarity.  He 
remembered  his  Pusey  dimly,  certain  Divinity  lectures,  an 
article  of  Westcott's. 

He  raised  his  hand  quickly  and  took  down  the  monograph 
on  The  Use  of  the  Old  Testament  in  the  New,  which  the 
squire  had  sent  him  in  the  earliest  days  of  their  acquaintance. 
A  secret  dread  and  repugnance  had  held  him  from  it  till  now. 
Curiously  enough  it  was  not  he  but  Catherine,  as  we  shall  see, 
who  had  opened  it  first.  Now,  however,  he  got  it  down  and 
turned  to  the  section  on  Daniel. 

It  was  a  change  of  conviction  on  the  subject  of  the  date  and 
authorship  of  this  strange  product  of  Jewish  patriotism  in  the 
second  century  before  Christ  that  drove  M.  Renan  out  of  the 
Church  of  Rome.  '  For  the  Catholic  Church  to  confess,'  he  says 
in  his  Souvenirs,  '  that  Daniel  is  an  apocryphal  book  of  the  time 
of  the  Maccabees,  would  be  to  confess  that  she  had  made  a  mis- 
take ;  if  she  had  made  this  mistake,  she  may  have  made  others ; 
she  is  no  longer  divinely  inspired.' 

The  Protestant,  who  is  in  truth  more  bound  to  the  Book  of 
Daniel  than  M.  Renan,  has  various  ways  of  getting  over  the 
difficulties  raised  against  the  supposed  authorship  of  the  book 
by  modern  criticism.  Robert  found  all  these  ways  enumerated 
in  the  brilliant  and  vigorous  pages  of  the  book  before  him. 

In  the  first  place,  like  the  orthodox  Saint-Sulpicien,  the  Pro- 
testant meets  the  critic  with  a  flat  non  possumus.  '  Your  argu- 
ments are  useless  and  irrelevant,'  he  says  in  effect.  '  However 
plausible  may  be  your  objections,  the  Book  of  Daniel  is  what  it 
professes  to  be,  because  our  Lord  quoted  it  in  such  a  manner  as 
to  distinctly  recognise  its  authority.  The  All -True  and  All- 
Knowing  cannot  have  made  a  mistake,  nor  can  He  have  ex- 
pressly led  His  disciples  to  regard  as  genuine  and  Divine, 
prophecies  which  were  in  truth  the  inventions  of  an  ingenious 
romancer.' 

But  the  liberal  Anglican — the  man,  that  is  to  say,  whose 
logical  sense  is  inferior  to  his  sense  of  literary  probabilities — 
proceeds  quite  differently. 

'Your  arguments  are  perfectly  just,'  he  says  to  the  critic; 
'  the  book  is  a  patriotic  fraud,  of  no  value  except  to  the  historian 
of  literature.  But  how  do  you  know  that  our  Lord  quoted  it  as 
true  in  the  strict  sense  ?  In  fact  He  quoted  it  as  literature,  as 


CHAP,  xxv  THE  SQUIRE  321 

a  Greek  might  have  quoted  Homer,  as  an  Englishman  might 
quote  Shakespeare.' 

And  many  a  harassed  Churchman  takes  refuge  forthwith  in 
the  new  explanation.  It  is  very  difficult,  no  doubt,  to  make  the 
passages  in  the  Gospels  agree  with  it,  but  at  the  bottom  of  his 
mind  there  is  a  saving  silent  scorn  for  the  old  theories  of  inspir- 
ation. He  admits  to  himself  that  probably  Christ  was  not  cor- 
rectly reported  in  the  matter. 

Then  appears  the  critic,  having  no  interests  to  serve,  no  parti 
pris  to  defend,  and  states  the  matter  calmly,  dispassionately,  as 
it  appears  to  him.  '  No  reasonable  man,'  says  the  ablest  German 
exponent  of  the  Book  of  Daniel,  'can  doubt' — that  this  most 
interesting  piece  of  writing  belongs  to  the  year  169  or  170  B.C. 
It  was  written  to  stir  up  the  courage  and  patriotism  of  the 
Jews,  weighed  down  by  the  persecutions  of  Antiochus  Epi- 
phanes.  It  had  enormous  vogue.  It  inaugurated  a  new  Apoca- 
lyptic literature.  And  clearly  the  youth  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
was  vitally  influenced  by  it.  It  entered  into  his  thought,  it 
helped  to  shape  his  career. 

But  Elsmere  did  not  trouble  himself  much  with  the  critic,  as 
at  any  rate  he  was  reported  by  the  author  of  the  book  before 
him.  Long  before  the  critical  case  was  reached,  he  had  flung 
the  book  heavily  from  him.  The  mind  accomplished  its  further 
task  without  help  from  outside.  In  the  stillness  of  the  night 
there  rose  up  weirdly  before  him  a  whole  new  mental  picture — 
effacing,  pushing  out,  innumerable  older  images  of  thought.  It 
was  the  image  of  a  purely  human  Christ — a  purely  human,  ex- 
plicable, yet  always  wonderful  Christianity.  It  broke  his  heart, 
but  the  spell  of  it  was  like  some  dream-country  wherein  we  see 
all  the  familiar  objects  of  life  in  new  relations  and  perspectives. 
He  gazed  upon  it  fascinated,  the  wailing  underneath  checked  a 
while  by  the  strange  beauty  and  order  of  the  emerging  spectacle. 
Only  a  little  while  !  Then  with  a  groan  Elsmere  looked  up,  his 
eyes  worn,  his  lips  white  and  set. 

'  I  must  face  it — I  must  face  it  through  !     God  help  me  ! ' 

A  slight  sound  overhead  in  Catherine's  room  sent  a  sudden 
spasm  of  feeling  through  the  young  face.  He  threw  himself 
down,  hiding  from  his  own  foresight  of  what  was  to  be. 

'  My  darling,  my  darling  !  But  she  shall  know  nothing  of  it 
—yet/ 


CHAPTER  XXV 

AND  he  did  face  it  through. 

The  next  three  months  were  the  bitterest  months  of  Elsmere's 
life.  They  were  marked  by  anguished  mental  struggle,  by  a 
consciousness  of  painful  separation  from  the  soul  nearest  to  his 
own,  and  by  a  constantly  increasing  sense  of  oppression,  of 

Y 


322  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

closing  avenues  and  narrowing  alternatives,  which  for  weeks 
together  seemed  to  hold  the  mind  in  a  grip  whence  there  was 
no  escape. 

That  struggle  was  not  hurried  and  embittered  by  the  bodily 
presence  of  the  squire.  Mr.  Wendover  went  off  to  Italy  a  few 
days  after  the  conversation  we  have  described.  But  though  he 
was  not  present  in  the  flesh  the  great  book  of  his  life  was  in 
Elsmere's  hands,  he  had  formally  invited  Elsmere's  remarks 
upon  it ;  and  the  air  of  Murewell  seemed  still  echoing  with  his 
sentences,  still  astir  with  his  thoughts.  That  curious  instinct 
of  pursuit,  that  avid  imperious  wish  to  crush  an  irritating  re- 
sistance, which  his  last  walk  with  Elsmere  had  first  awakened 
in  him  with  any  strength,  persisted.  He  wrote  to  Robert  from 
abroad,  and  .the  proud  fastidious  scholar  had  never  taken  more 
pains  with  anything  than  with  those  letters. 

Robert  might  have  stopped  them,  might  have  cast  the  whole 
matter  from  him  with  one  resolute  effort.  In  other  relations  he 
had  will  enough  and  to  spare. 

Was  it  an  unexpected  weakness  of  fibre  that  made  it  impos- 
sible ? — that  had  placed  him  in  this  way  at  the  squire's  disposal  1 
Half  the  world  would  answer  yes.  Might  not  the  other  half 
plead  that  in  every  generation  there  is  a  minority  of  these 
mobile,  impressionable,  defenceless  natures,  who  are  ultimately 
at  the  mercy  of  experience,  at  the  mercy  of  thought,  at  the 
mercy  (shall  we  say  ?)  of  truth  ;  and  that,  in  fact,  it  is  from  this 
minority  that  all  human  advance  comes  1 

During  these  three  miserable  months  it  cannot  be  said — 
poor  Elsmere ! — that  he  attempted  any  systematic  study  of 
Christian  evidence.  His  mind  was  too  much  torn,  his  heart 
too  sore.  He  pounced  feverishly  on  one  test  point  after  another, 
on  the  Pentateuch,  the  Prophets,  the  relation  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment to  the  thoughts  and  beliefs  of  its  time,  the  Gospel  of  St. 
John,  the  evidence  as  to  the  Resurrection,  the  intellectual  and 
moral  conditions  surrounding  the  formation  of  the  Canon.  His 
mind  swayed  hither  and  thither,  driven  from  each  resting-place 
in  turn  by  the  pressure  of  some  new  difficulty.  And — let  it  be 
said  again — all  through,  the  only  constant  element  in  the  whole 
dismal  process  was  his  trained  historical  sense.  If  he  had  gone 
through  this  conflict  at  Oxford,  for  instance,  he  would  have 
come  out  of  it  unscathed  :  for  he  would  simply  have  remained 
throughout  it  ignorant  or  the  true  problems  at  issue.  As  it 
was,  the  keen  instrument  he  had  sharpened  so  laboriously  on 
indifferent  material  now  ploughed  its  agonising  way,  bit  by  bit, 
into  the  most  intimate  recesses  of  thought  and  faith. 

Much  of  the  actual  struggle  he  was  able  to  keep  from 
Catherine's  view,  as  he  had  vowed  to  himself  to  keep  it.  For 
after  the  squire's  departure  Mrs.  Darcy  too  went  joyously  up 
to  London  to  flutter  a  while  through  the  golden  alleys  of  May- 
fair  ;  and  Elsmere  was  left  once  more  in  undisturbed  possession 
of  the  Murewell  library.  There  for  a  while  on  every  day — 


CHAP,  xxv  THE  SQUIRE  323 

oh,  pitiful  relief ! — he  could  hide  himself  from  the  eyes  he 
loved. 

But,  after  all,  married  love  allows  of  nothing  but  the  shallow- 
est concealments.  Catherine  had  already  had  one  or  two 
alarms.  Once,  in  Robert's  study,  among  a  tumbled  mass  of 
books  he  had  pulled  out  in  search  of  something  missing,  and 
which  she  was  putting  in  order,  she  had  come  across  that  very 
book  on  the  Prophecies  which  at  a  critical  moment  had  so 
deeply  affected  Elsmere.  It  lay  open,  and  Catherine  was  caught 
by  the  heading  of  a  section  :  'The  Messianic  Idea.' 

She  began  to  read,  mechanically  at  first,  and  read  about  a 
page.  That  page  so  shocked  a  mind  accustomed  to  a  purely 
traditional  and  mystical  interpretation  of  the  Bible  that  the 
book  dropped  abruptly  from  her  hand,  and  she  stood  a  moment 
by  her  husband's  table,  her  fine  face  pale  and  frowning. 

She  noticed,  with  bitterness,  Mr.  Wendover's  name  on  the 
title-page.  Was  it  right  for  Robert  to  have  such  books  ?  Was 
it  wise,  was  it  prudent,  for  the  Christian  to  measure  himself 
against  such  antagonism  as  this  ?  She  wrestled  painfully  with 
the  question.  '  Oh,  but  I  can't  understand,'  she  said  to  herself 
with  an  almost  agonised  energy.  '  It  is  I  who  am  timid,  faith- 
less !  He  must — he  must — know  what  they  say  ;  he  must  have 
gone  through  the  dark  places  if  he  is  to  carry  others  through 
them.' 

So  she  stilled  and  trampled  on  the  inward  protest.  She 
yearned  to  speak  of  it  to  Robert,  but  something  withheld  her. 
In  her  passionate  wifely  trust  she  could  not  bear  to  seem  to 
question  the  use  he  made  of  his  time  and  thought ;  and  a  deli- 
cate moral  scruple  warned  her  she  might  easily  allow  her 
dislike  of  the  Wendover  friendship  to  lead  her  into  exaggera.- 
tion  and  injustice. 

But  the  stab  of  that  moment  recurred — dealt  now  by  one 
slight  incident,  now  by  another.  And  after  the  squire's  depart- 
ure Catherine  suddenly  realised  that  the  whole  atmosphere  of 
their  home-life  was  changed. 

Robert  was  giving  himself  to  his  people  with  a  more  scrupu- 
lous energy  than  ever.  Never  had  she  seen  him  so  pitiful,  so 
full  of  heart  for  every  human  creature.  His  sermons,  with  their 
constant  imaginative  dwelling  on  the  earthly  life  of  Jesus, 
affected  her  now  with  a  poignancy,  a  pathos,  which  were  almost 
unbearable.  And  his  tenderness  to  her  was  beyond  words.  But 
with  that  tenderness  there  was  constantly  mixed  a  note  of  re- 
morse, a  painful  self -depreciation  which  she  could  hardly  notice 
in  speech,  but  which  every  now  and  then  wrung  her  heart. 
And  in  his  parish  work  he  often  showed  a  depression,  an  irri- 
tability, entirely  new  to  her.  He  who  had  always  the  happiest 
power  of  forgetting  to-morrow  all  the  rubs  of  to-day,  seemed 
now  quite  incapable  of  saving  himself  and  his  cheerfulness  in 
the  old  ways,  nay,  had  developed  a  capacity  for  sheer  worry  she 
had  never  seen  in  him  before.  And  meanwhile  all  the  old 


324  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

gossips  of  the  place  spoke  their  mind  freely  to  Catherine  on  the 
subject  of  the  rector's  looks,  coupling  their  remarks  with  a 
variety  of  prescriptions,  out  of  which  Robert  did  sometimes 
manage  to  get  one  of  his  old  laughs.  His  sleeplessness,  too, 
which  had  always  been  a  constitutional  tendency,  had  become 
now  so  constant  and  wearing  that  Catherine  began  to  feel  a 
nervous  hatred  of  his  book- work,  and  of  those  long  mornings  at 
the  Hall ;  a  passionate  wish  to  put  an  end  to  it,  and  carry  him 
away  for  a  holiday. 

But  he  would  not  hear  of  the  holiday,  and  he  could  hardly 
bear  any  talk  of  himself.  And  Catherine  had  been  brought  up 
in  a  school  of  feeling  which  bade  love  be  very  scrupulous,  very 
delicate,  and  which  recognised  in  the  strongest  way  the  right 
of  every  human  soul  to  its  own  privacy,  its  own  reserves.  That 
something  definite  troubled  him  she  was  certain.  What  it  was 
he  clearly  avoided  telling  her,  and  she  could  not  hurt  him  by 
impatience. 

He  would  tell  her  soon — when  it  was  right — she  cried  piti- 
fully to  herself.  Meantime  both  suffered,  she  not  knowing 
why,  clinging  to  each  other  the  while  more  passionately  than 
ever. 

One  night,  however,  coming  down  in  her  dressing-gown  into 
the  study  in  search  of  a  Christian  Year  she  had  left  behind  her, 
she  found  Robert  with  papers  strewn  before  him,  his  arms  on 
the  table  and  his  head  laid  down  upon  them.  He  looked  up  as 
she  came  in,  and  the  expression  of  his  eyes  drew  her  to  him 
irresistibly. 

'  Were  you  asleep,  Robert  ?    Do  come  to  bed  ! ' 

He  sat  up,  and  with  a  pathetic  gesture  held  out  his  arms  to 
her.  She  came  on  to  his  knee,  putting  her  white  arms  round 
his  neck,  while  he  leant  his  head  against  her  breast. 

'Are  you  tired  with  all  your  walking  to-day?'  she  said 
presently,  a  pang  at  her  heart. 

'  I  am  tired,'  he  said,  '  but  not  with  walking.' 

'  Does  your  book  worry  you  ?  You  shouldn't  work  so  hard, 
Robert — you  shouldn't ! ' 

He  started. 

'Don't  talk  of  it.  Don't  let  us  talk  or  think  at  all,  only 
feel!' 

And  he  tightened  his  arms  round  her,  happy  once  more  for 
a  moment  in  this  environment  of  a  perfect  love.  There  was 
silence  for  a  few  moments,  Catherine  feeling  more  and  more 
disturbed  and  anxious. 

'  Think  of  your  mountains,'  he  said  presently,  his  eyes  still 
pressed  against  her,  '  of  High  Fell,  and  the  moonlight,  and  the 
house  where  Mary  Backhouse  died.  Oh  !  Catherine,  I  see  you 
still,  and  shall  always  see  you,  as  I  saw  you  then,  my  angel  of 
healing  and  of  grace  ! ' 

'I  too  have  been  thinking  of  her  to-night,'  said  Catherine 
softly,  'and  of  the  walk  to  Shanmoor.  This  evening  in  the 


CHAP,  xxv  THE  SQUIRE  325 

garden  it  seemed  to  me  as  though  there  were  Westmoreland 
scents  in  the  air  !  I  was  haunted  by  a  vision  of  bracken,  and 
rocks,  and  sheep  browsing  up  the  fell  slopes.' 

4  Oh  for  a  breath  of  the  wind  on  High  Fell ! '  cried  Kobert, — 
it  was  so  new  to  her,  the  dear  voice  with  this  accent  in  it 
of  yearning  depression  !  4 1  want  more  of  the  spirit  of  the 
mountains,  their  serenity,  their  strength.  Say  me  that  Duddon 
sonnet  you  used  to  say  to  me  there,  as  you  said  it  to  me  that 
last  Sunday  before  our  wedding,  when  we  walked  up  the  Shan- 
moor  road  to  say  good-bye  to  that  blessed  spot.  Oh  !  how  I  sit 
and  think  of  it  sometimes,  when  life  seems  to  be  going  crookedly, 
that  rock  on  the  fell-side  where  I  found  you,  and  caught  you, 
and  snared  you,  my  dove,  for  ever.' 

And  Catherine,  whose  mere  voice  was  as  balm  to  this  man  of 
many  impulses,  repeated  to  him,  softly  in  the  midnight  silence, 
those  noble  lines  in  which  Wordsworth  has  expressed,  with  the 
reserve  and  yet  the  strength  of  the  great  poet,  the  loftiest 
yearning  of  the  purest  hearts — 

'  Enough,  if  something  from  our  hand  have  power 
To  live  and  move,  and  serve  the  future  hour, 
And  if,  as  towards  the  silent  tomb  we  go, 
Through  love,  through  hope,  and  faith's  transcendent  dower, 
We  feel  that  we  are  greater  than  we  know.' 

'  He  has  divined  it  all,'  said  Kobert,  drawing  a  long  breath 
when  she  stopped,  which  seem  to  relax  the  fibres  of  the  inner 
man,  'the  fever  and  the  fret  of  human  thought,  the  sense  of 
littleness,  of  impotence,  of  evanescence — and  he  has  soothed 
it  all!' 

'  Oh,  not  all,  not  all ! '  cried  Catherine,  her  look  kindling,  and 
her  rare  passion  breaking  through  ;  '  how  little  in  comparison  ! ' 

For  her  thoughts  were  with  him  of  whom  it  was  said,  '  He 
needed  not  tJiat  any  one  should  bear  witness  concerning  man,  for 
he  knew  what  was  in  man'  But  .Robert's  only  response  was 
silence  and  a  kind  of  quivering  sigh. 

4  Robert ! '  she  cried,  pressing  her  cheek  against  his  temple, 
4  tell  me,  my  dear,  dear  husband,  what  it  is  troubles  you.  Some- 
thing does — I  am  certain — certain  ! ' 

4  Catherine — wife — beloved  ! '  he  said  to  her,  after  another 
pause,  in  a  tone  of  strange  tension  she  never  forgot ;  '  genera- 
tions of  men  and  women  have  known  what  it  is  to  be  led 
spiritually  into  the  desert,  into  that  outer  wilderness  where 
even  the  Lord  was  "  tempted."  What  am  I  that  I  should  claim 
to  escape  it?  And  you  cannot  come  through  it  with  me, 
my  darling — no,  not  even  you  !  It  is  loneliness — it  is  solitari- 
ness itself- '  and  he  shuddered.  'But  pray  for  me — pray 

that  He  may  be  with  me,  and  that  at  the  end  there  may  be 
light ! ' 

He  pressed  her  to  him  convulsively,  then  gently  released  her. 
His  solemn  eyes,  fixed  upon  her  as  she  stood  there  beside  him, 


326  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

seemed  to  forbid  her  to  say  a  word  more.  She  stooped ;  she 
laid  her  lips  to  his ;  it  was  a  meeting  of  soul  with  soul ;  then 
she  went  softly  out,  breaking  the  quiet  of  the  house  by  a  stifled 
sob  as  she  passed  upstairs. 

Oh !  but  at  last  she  thought  she  understood  him.  She  had 
not  passed  her  girlhood,  side  by  side  with  a  man  of  delicate 
fibre,  of  melancholy  and  scrupulous  temperament,  and  within 
hearing  of  all  the  natural  interests  of  a  deeply  religious  mind, 
religious  biography,  religious  psychology,  and — within  certain 
sharply  denned  limits — religious  speculation,  without  being 
brought  face  to  face  with  the  black  possibilities  of  '  doubts'  and 
'  difficulties '  as  barriers  in  the  Christian  path.  Has  not  almost 
every  Christian  of  illustrious  excellence  been  tried  and  humbled 
by  them  ?  Catherine,  looking  back  upon  her  own  youth,  could 
remember  certain  crises  of  religious  melancholy,  during  which 
she  had  often  dropped  off  to  sleep  at  night  on  a  pillow  wet  with 
tears.  They  had  passed  away  quickly,  and  for  ever.  But  she 
went  back  to  them  now,  straining  her  eyes  through  the  dark- 
ness of  her  own  past,  recalling  her  father's  days  of  spiritual 
depression,  and  the  few  difficult  words  she  had  sometimes  heard 
from  him  as  to  those  bitter  times  of  religious  dryness  and  hope- 
lessness, by  which  God  chastens  from  time  to  time  His  most 
faithful  and  heroic  souls.  A  half -contempt  awoke  in  her  for  the 
unclouded  serenity  and  confidence  of  her  own  inner  life.  If  her 
own  spiritual  experience  had  gone  deeper,  she  told  herself  with 
the  strangest  self -blame,  she  would  have  been  able  now  to 
understand  Robert  better — to  help  him  more. 

She  thought  as  she  lay  awake  after  those  painful  moments  in 
the  study,  the  tears  welling  up  slowly  in  the  darkness,  of  many 
things  that  had  puzzled  her  in  the  past.  She  remembered  the 
book  she  had  seen  on  his  table  ;  her  thoughts  travelled  over  his 
months  of  intercourse  with  the  squire ;  and  the  memory  of  Mr. 
Newcome's  attitude  towards  the  man  whom  he  conceived  to  be 
his  Lord's  adversary,  as  contrasted  with  Robert's,  filled  her  with 
a  shrinking  pain  she  dared  not  analyse. 

Still  all  through,  her  feeling  towards  her  husband  was  in  the 
main  akin  to  that  of  the  English  civilian  at  home  towards 
English  soldiers  abroad,  suffering  and  dying  that  England  may 
be  great.  She  had  sheltered  herself  all  her  life  from  those 
deadly  forces  of  unbelief  which  exist  in  English  society,  by  a 
steady  refusal  to  know  what,  however,  any  educated  university 
man  must  perforce  know.  But  such  a  course  of  action  was 
impossible  for  Robert.  He  had  been  forced  into  the  open,  into 
the  full  tide  of  the  Lord's  battle.  The  chances  of  that  battle  are 
many;  and  the  more  courage  the  more  risk  of  wounds  and 
pain.  But  the  great  Captain  knows — the  great  Captain  does 
not  forget  His  own  ! 

For  never,  never  had  she  the  smallest  doubt  as  to  the  issue 
of  this  sudden  crisis  in  her  husband's  consciousness,  even  when 
she  came  nearest  to  apprehending  its  nature.  As  well  might 


CHAP,  xxv  THE  SQUIRE  327 

she  doubt  the  return  of  daylight,  as  dream  of  any  permanent 
eclipse  descending  upon  the  faith  which  had  shone  through 
every  detail  of  Robert's  ardent  impulsive  life,  with  all  its 
struggles,  all  its  failings,  all  its  beauty,  since  she  had  known 
him  first.  The  dread  did  not  even  occur  to  her.  In  her  agony 
of  pity  and  reverence  she  thought  of  him  as  passing  through  a 
trial,  which  is  specially  the  believer's  trial — the  chastening  by 
which  God  proves  the  soul  He  loves.  Let  her  only  love  and 
trust  in  patience. 

So  that  day  by  day  as  Robert's  depression  still  continued, 
Catherine  surrounded  him  with  the  tenderest  and  wisest  affec- 
tion. Her  quiet  common  sense  made  itself  heard,  forbidding 
her  to  make  too  much  of  the  change  in  him,  which  might  after 
all,  she  thought,  be  partly  explained  by  the  mere  physical 
results  of  his  long  strain  of  body  and  mind  during  the  Mile  End 
epidemic.  And  for  the  rest  she  would  not  argue  ;  she  would 
not  inquire.  She  only  prayed  that  she  might  so  lead  the 
Christian  life  beside  him,  that  the  Lord's  tenderness,  the  Lord's 
consolation,  might  shine  upon  him  through  her.  It  had  never 
been  her  wont  to  speak  to  Mm  much  about  his  own  influence, 
his  own  effect,  in  the  parish.  To  the  austerer  Christian  con- 
siderations of  this  kind  are  forbidden  :  '  It  is  not  I,  but  Christ 
that  worketh  in  me.'  But  now,  whenever  she  came  across  any 
striking  trace  of  his  power  over  the  weak  or  the  impure,  the 
sick  or  the  sad,  she  would  in  some  way  make  it  known  to  him, 
offering  it  to  him  in  her  delicate  tenderness,  as  though  it  were  a 
gift  that  the  Father  had  laid  in  her  hand  for  him — a  token  that 
the  Master  was  still  indeed  with  His  servant,  and  that  all  was 
fundamentally  well ! 

And  so  much,  perhaps,  the  contact  with  his  wife's  faith,  the 
power  of  her  love,  wrought  in  Robert,  that  during  these  weeks 
and  months  he  also  never  lost  his  own  certainty  of  emergence 
from  the  shadow  which  had  overtaken  him.  And,  indeed,  driven 
on  from  day  to  day  as  he  was  by  an  imperious  intellectual 
thirst  which  would  be  satisfied,  the  religion  of  the  heart,  the 
imaginative  emotional  habit  of  years,  that  incessant  drama 
which  the  soul  enacts  with  the  Divine  Powers  to  which  it  feels 
itself  committed,  lived  and  persisted  through  it  all.  Feeling 
was  untouched.  The  heart  was  still  passionately  on  the  side  of 
all  its  old  loves  and  adorations,  still  blindly  trustful  that  in  the 
end,  by  some  compromise  as  yet  unseen,  they  would  be  restored 
to  it  intact. 

Some  time  towards  the  end  of  July  Robert  was  coming  home 
from  the  Hall  before  lunch,  tired  and  worn,  as  the  morning 
always  left  him,  and  meditating  some  fresh  sheets  of  the  squire's 
proofs  which  had  been  in  his  hands  that  morning.  On  the  road 
crossing  that  to  the  rectory  he  suddenly  saw  Reginald  Newcome, 
thinner  and  whiter  than  ever,  striding  along  as  fast  as  cassock 
and  cloak  would  let  him,  his  eyes  on  the  ground,  and  his  wide- 
awake drawn  over  them.  He  and  Elsmere  had  scarcely  met  for 


328  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  m 

months,  and  Robert  had  lately  made  up  his  mind  that  Newcome 
was  distinctly  less  friendly,  and  wished  to  show  it. 

Elsmere  had  touched  his  arm  before  Newcome  had  perceived 
any  one  near  him.  Then  he  drew  back  with  a  start. 

'  Elsmere,  you  here !  I  had  an  idea  you  were  away  for  a 
holiday  ! ' 

' Oh  dear,  no ! '  said  Robert,  smiling.  'I  may  get  away  in 
September,  perhaps — not  till  then.' 

'  Mr.  Wendover  at  home  ? '  said  the  other,  his  eyes  turning  to 
the  Hall,  of  which  the  chimneys  were  just  visible  from  where 
they  stood. 

'  No,  he  is  abroad.' 

'  You  and  he  have  made  friends,  I  understand,'  said  the  other 
abruptly,  his  eagle  look  returning  to  Elsmere ;  '  I  hear  of  you  as 
always  together.' 

'  We  have  made  friends,  and  we  walk  a  great  deal  when  the 
squire  is  here,'  said  Robert,  meeting  Newcome's  harshness  of 
tone  with  a  bright  dignity.  '  Mr.  Wendover  has  even  been 
doing  something  for  us  in  the  village.  You  should  come  and 
see  the  new  Institute.  The  roof  is  on,  and  we  shall  open  it  in 
August  or  September.  The  best  building  of  the  kind  in  the 
country  by  far,  and  Mr.  Wendover's  gift.' 

'I  suppose  you  use  the  library  a  great  deal  ?'  said  Newcome, 
paying  no  attention  to  these  remarks,  and  still  eyeing  his  com- 
panion closely. 

'  A  great  deal.' 

Robert  had  at  that  moment  under  his  arm  a  German  treatise 
on  the  history  of  the  Logos  doctrine,  which  afterwards,  looking 
back  on  the  little  scene,  he  thought  it  probable  Newcome  recog- 
nised. They  turned  towards  the  rectory  together,  Newcome 
still  asking  abrupt  questions  as  to  the  squire,  the  length  of  time 
he  was  to  be  away,  Elsmere's  work,  parochial  and  literary, 
during  the  past  six  months,  the  numbers  of  his  Sunday  congre- 
gation, of  his  communicants,  etc.  Elsmere  bore  his  catechism 
with  perfect  temper,  though  Newcome's  manner  had  in  it  a 
strange  and  almost  judicial  imperativeness. 

'  Elsmere,'  said  his  questioner  presently,  after  a  pause,  '  I  am 
going  to  have  a  retreat  for  priests  at  the  Clergy  House  next 

month.  Father  H ,'  mentioning  a  famous  High  Churchman, 

'  will  conduct  it.  You  would  do  me  a  special  favour ' — and  sud- 
denly the  face  softened,  and  shone  with  all  its  old  magnetism  on 
Elsmere — '  if  you  would  come.  I  believe  you  would  find  nothing 
to  dislike  in  it,  or  in  our  rule,  which  is  a  most  simple  one.' 

Robert  smiled,  and  laid  his  hand  on  the  other's  arm. 

'  No,  Newcome,  no  ;  I  am  in  no  mood  for  H .' 

The  High  Churchman  looked  at  him  with  a  quick  and  painful 
anxiety  visible  in  the  stern  eyes. 

'  Will  you  tell  me  what  that  means  ? ' 

'It  means,'  said  Robert,  clasping  his  hands  tightly  behind 
him,  his  pace  slackening  a  little  to  meet  that  of  Newcome — 'it 


CHAP,  xxv  THE  SQUIRE  329 

means  that  if  you  will  give  me  your  prayers,  Newcome,  your 
companionship  sometimes,  your  pity  always,  I  will  thank  you 
from  the  bottom  of  my  heart.  But  I  am  in  a  state  just  now 
when  I  must  fight  my  battles  for  myself,  and  in  God's  sight  only ! ' 

It  was  the  first  burst  of  confidence  which  had  passed  his  lips 
to  any  one  but  Catherine. 

Newcome  stood  still,  a  tremor  of  strong  emotion  running 
through  the  emaciated  face. 

'  You  are  in  trouble,  Elsmere ;  I  felt  it,  I  knew  it,  when  I 
first  saw  you  ! ' 

'Yes,  fam  in  trouble,'  said  Robert  quietly. 

'  Opinions  ? ' 

'  Opinions,  I  suppose — or  facts,'  said  Robert,  his  arms  drop- 
ping wearily  beside  him.  '  Have  you  ever  known  what  it  is  to 
be  troubled  in  mind,  I  wonder,  Newcome  ? ' 

And  he  looked  at  his  companion  with  a  sudden  pitiful 
curiosity. 

A  kind  of  flash  passed  over  Mr.  Newcome's  face. 

'  Have  I  ever  known  ? '  he  repeated  vaguely,  and  then  he  drew 
las  thin  hand,  the  hand  of  the  ascetic  and  the  mystic,  hastily 
across  his  eyes,  and  was  silent — his  lips  moving,  his  gaze  on  the 

ground,  his  whole  aspect  that  of  a  man  wrought  out  of  himself 
y  a  sudden  passion  of  memory. 

Robert  watched  him  with  surprise,  and  was  just  speaking, 
when  Mr.  Newcome  looked  up,  every  drawn  attenuated  feature 
working  painfully. 

'  Did  you  never  ask  yourself,  Elsmere,'  he  said  slowly,  '  what 
it  was  drove  me  from  the  bar  and  journalism  to  the  East  End  1 
Do  you  think  I  don't  know,'  and  his  voice  rose,  his  eyes  flamed, 
'what  black  devil  it  is  that  is  gnawing  at  your  heart  now? 
Why,  man,  I  have  been  through  darker  gulfs  of  hell  than  you 
have  ever  sounded !  Many  a  night  I  have  felt  myself  mad — 
mad  of  doubt — a  castaway  on  a  shoreless  sea  ;  doubting  not  only 
God  or  Christ,  but  myself,  the  soul,  the  very  existence  of  good. 
I  found  only  one  way  out  of  it,  and  you  will  find  only  one  way.' 

The  lithe  hand  caught  Robert's  arm  impetuously — the  voice 
with  its  accent  of  fierce  conviction  was  at  his  ear. 

'  Trample  on  yourself  !  Pray  down  the  demon,  fast,  scourge, 
kill  the  body,  that  the  soul  may  live  !  What  are  we,  miserable 
worms,  that  we  should  defy  the  Most  High,  that  we  should  set 
our  wretched  faculties  against  His  Omnipotence?  Submit — 
submit-j-humble  yourself,  my  brother  !  Fling  away  the  freedom 
which  is  your  ruin.  There  is  no  freedom  for  man.  Either  a, 
slave  to  Christ,  or  a  slave  to  his  own  lusts — there  is  no  other 
choice.  Go  away ;  exchange  your  work  here  for  a  time  for  work 
in  London.  You  have  too  much  leisure  here :  Satan  has  too 
much  opportunity.  I  foresaw  it — I  foresaw  it  when  you  and  I 
first  met.  I  felt  I  had  a  message  for  you,  and  here  I  deliver  it. 
In  the  Lord's  name,  I  bid  you  fly ;  I  bid  you  yield  in  time. 
Better  to  be  the  Lord's  captive  than  the  Lord's  betrayer  I ' 


330  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  in 

The  wasted  form  was  drawn  up  to  its  full  height,  the  arm  was 
outstretched,  the  long  cloak  fell  back  from  it  in  long  folds — 
voice  and  eye  were  majesty  itself.  Robert  had  a  tremor  of  re- 
sponsive passion.  How  easy  it  sounded,  how  tempting,  to  cut 
the  knot,  to  mutilate  and  starve  the  rebellious  intellect  which 
would  assert  itself  against  the  soul's  purest  instincts !  New- 
come  had  done  it — why  not  he  ? 

And  then,  suddenly,  as  he  stood  gazing  at  his  companion,  the 
spring  sun,  and  murmur  all  about  them,  another  face,  another 
life,  another  message,  flashed  on  his  inmost  sense — the  face  and 
life  of  Henry  Grey.  Words  torn  from  their  context,  but  full 
for  him  of  intensest  meaning,  passed  rapidly  through  his  mind  : 
'  God  is  not  wisely  trusted  when  declared  unintelligible!  '  Such 
honour  rooted  in  dishonour  stands  ;  such  faith  unfaithful  makes 
us  falsely  true.'  '  God  is  for  ever  reason :  and  His  communication, 
His  revelation,  is  reason.' 

He  turned  away  with  a  slight  sad  shake  of  the  head.  The 
spell  was  broken.  Mr.  Newcome's  arm  dropped,  and  he  moved 
sombrely  on  beside  Robert — the  hand,  which  held  a  little  book 
of  Hours  against  his  cloak,  trembling  slightly. 

At  the  rectory  gate  he  stopped. 

'  Good-bye — I  must  go  home.' 

'  You  won't  come  in  ? — No,  no,  Newcome ;  believe  me,  I  am 
no  rash  careless  egotist,  risking  wantonly  the  most  precious 
things  in  life  !  But  the  call  is  on  me,  and  I  must  follow  it.  All 
life  is  God's,  and  all  thought — not  only  a  fraction  of  it.  He 
cannot  let  me  wander  very  far  ! ' 

But  the  cold  fingers  he  held  so  warmly  dropped  from  his,  and 
Newcome  turned  away. 

A  week  afterwards,  or  thereabouts,  Robert  had  in  some  sense 
followed  Newcome's  counsel.  Admonished  perhaps  by  sheer 
physical  weakness,  as  much  as  by  anything  else,  he  had  for  the 
moment  laid  down  his  arms ;  he  had  yielded  to  an  invading 
feebleness  of  the  will,  which  refused,  as  it  were,  to  carry  on  the 
struggle  any  longer,  at  such  a  life-destroying  pitch  of  intensity. 
The  intellectual  oppression  of  itself  brought  about  wild  reaction 
and  recoil,  and  a  passionate  appeal  to  that  inward  witness  of 
the  soul  which  holds  its  own  long  after  the  reason  has  practically 
ceased  to  struggle. 

It  came  about  in  this  way.  One  morning  he  stood  reading 
in  the  window  of  the  library  the  last  of  the  squire's  letters.  It 
contained  a  short  but  masterly  analysis  of  the  mental  habits 
and  idiosyncrasies  of  St.  Paul,  a  propos  of  St.  Paul's  witness  to 
the  Resurrection.  Every  now  and  then,  as  Elsmere  turned  the 
pages,  the  orthodox  protest  would  assert  itself,  the  orthodox 
arguments  make  themselves  felt  as  though  in  mechanical  in- 
voluntary protest.  But  their  force  and  vitality  was  gone.  Be- 
tween the  Paul  of  Anglican  theology  and  the  fiery  fallible  man 
of  genius — so  weak  logically,  so  strong  in  poetry,  in  rhetoric,  in 
moral  passion,  whose  portrait  has  been  drawn  for  us  by  a  free 


CHAP,  xxv  THE  SQUIRE  331 

and  temperate  criticism — the  rector  knew,  in  a  sort  of  dull  way, 
that  his  choice  was  made.  The  one  picture  carried  reason  and 
imagination  with  it ;  the  other  contented  neither. 

But  as  he  put  down  the  letter  something  seemed  to  snap 
within  him.  Some  chord  of  physical  endurance  gave  way.  For 
five  months  he  had  been  living  intellectually  at  a  speed  no  man 
maintains  with  impunity,  and  this  letter  of  the  squire's,  with  its 
imperious  demands  upon  the  tired  irritable  brain,  was  the  last 
straw. 

He  sank  down  on  the  oriel  seat,  the  letter  dropping  from  his 
hands.  Outside,  the  little  garden,  now  a  mass  of  red  and  pink 
roses,  the  hill  and  the  distant  stretches  of  park  were  wrapped 
in  a  thick  sultry  mist,  through  which  a  dim  far-off  sunlight 
struggled  on  to  the  library  floor,  and  lay  in  ghostly  patches  on 
thepolished  boards  and  lower  ranges  of  books. 

The  simplest  religious  thoughts  began  to  flow  over  him — the 
simplest  childish  words  of  prayer  were  on  his  lips.  He  felt 
himself  delivered,  he  knew  not  how  or  why. 

He  rose  deliberately,  laid  the  squire's  letter  among  his  other 
papers,  and  tied  them  up  carefully  ;  then  he  took  up  the  books 
which  lay  piled  on  the  squire's  writing-table  :  all  those  volumes 
of  German,  French,  and  English  criticism,  liberal  or  apologetic, 
which  he  had  been  accumulating  round  him  day  by  day  with  a 
feverish  toilsome  impartiality,  and  began  rapidly  and  methodi- 
cally to  put  them  back  in  their  places  on  the  shelves. 

'I  have  done  too  much  thinking,  too  much  reading,'  he  was 
saying  to  himself  as  he  went  through  his  task.  '  Now  let  it  be 
the  turn  of  something  else  ! ' 

And  still  as  he  handled  the  books,  it  was  as  though  Catherine's 
figure  glided  backwards  and  forwards  beside  him,  across  the 
smooth  floor,  as  though  her  hand  were  on  his  arm,  her  eyes 
shining  into  his.  Ah — he  knew  well  what  it  was  had  made  the 
sharpest  sting  of  this  wrestle  through  which  he  had  been  pass- 
ing !  It  was  not  merely  religious  dread,  religious  shame ;  that 
terror  of  disloyalty  to  the  Divine  Images  which  have  filled  the 
soul's  inmost  shrine  since  its  first  entry  into  consciousness, 
such  as  every  good  man  feels  in  a  like  strait.  This  had  been 
strong  indeed  ;  but  men  are  men,  and  love  is  love  !  Ay,  it  was 
to  the  dark  certainty  of  Catherine's  misery  that  every  advance 
in  knowledge  and  intellectual  power  had  brought  him  nearer. 
It  was  from  that  certainty  that  he  now,  and  for  the  last  time, 
recoiled.  It  was  too  much.  It  could  not  be  borne. 

He  walked  home,  counting  up  the  engagements  of  the  next 
few  weeks — the  school-treat,  two  club  field-days,  a  sermon  in 
the  county  town,  the  probable  opening  of  the  new  Workmen's 
Institute,  and  so  on.  Oh !  to  be  through  them  all  and  away, 
away  amid  Alpine  scents  and  silences.  He  stood  a  moment 
beside  the  gray  slowly-moving  river,  half  hidden  beneath  the 
rank  flower-growth,  the  tansy  and  willow-herb,  the  luxuriant 
elder  and  trailing  brambles  of  its  August  banks,  and  thought 


332  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  m 

with  hungry  passion  of  the  clean-swept  Alpine  pasture,  the  fir- 
woods,  and  the  tameless  mountain  streams.  In  three  weeks  or 
less  he  and  Catherine  should  be  climbing  the  Jaman  or  the  Dent 
du  Midi.  And  till  then  he  would  want  all  his  time  for  men  and 
women.  Books  should  hold  him  no  more. 

Catherine  only  put  her  arms  round  his  neck  in  silence  when 
he  told  her.  The  relief  was  too  great  for  words.  He,  too,  held 
her  close,  saying  nothing.  But  that  night,  for  the  first  time 
for  weeks,  Elsmere's  wife  slept  in  peace  and  woke  without  dread 
of  the  day  before  her. 


BOOK  IV 

CEISIS 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

THE  next  fortnight  was  a  time  of  truce.  Elsmere  neither  read 
nor  reasoned.  He  spent  his  days  in  the  school,  in  the  village, 
pottering  about  the  Mile  End  cottages,  or  the  new  Institute — 
sometimes  fishing,  sometimes  passing  long  summer  hours  on 
the  commons  with  his  club  boys,  hunting  the  ponds  for  cad- 
dises, newts,  and  water-beetles,  peering  into  the  furze-bushes 
for  second  broods,  or  watching  the  sand-martins  in  the  gravel- 
pits,  and  trudging  home  at  night  in  the  midst  of  an  escort  of 
enthusiasts,  all  of  them  with  pockets  as  full  and  miry  as  his 
own,  to  deposit  the  treasures  of  the  day  in  the  club -room. 
Once  more  the  rector,  though  physically  perhaps  less  ardent 
than  of  yore,  was  the  life  of  the  party,  and  a  certain  awe  and 
strangeness  which  had  developed  in  his  boys'  minds  towards 
him,  during  the  last  few  weeks,  passed  away. 

It  was  curious  that  in  these  days  he  would  neither  sit  nor 
walk  alone  if  he  could  help  it.  Catherine  or  a  stray  parishioner 
was  almost  always  with  him.  All  the  while,  vaguely,  in  the 
depths  of  consciousness,  there  was  the  knowledge  that  behind 
this  piece  of  quiet  water  on  which  his  life  was  now  sailing, 
there  lay  storm  and  darkness,  and  that  in  front  loomed  fresh 
possibilities  of  tempest.  He  knew,  in  a  way,  that  it  was  a 
treacherous  peace  which  had  overtaken  him.  And  yet  it  was 
peace.  The  pressure  exerted  by  the  will  had  temporarily  given 
way,  and  the  deepest  forces  of  the  man's  being  had  reasserted 
themselves.  He  could  feel  and  love  and  pray  again  j  and 
Catherine,  seeing  the  old  glow  in  the  eyes,  the  old  spring  in  the 
step,  made  the  whole  of  life  one  thank-offering. 

On  the  evening  following  that  moment  of  reaction  in  the 
Murewell  library,  Robert  had  written  to  the  squire.  His  letter 
had  been  practically  a  withdrawal  from  the  correspondence. 

'  I  find,  he  wrote,  '  that  I  have  been  spending  too  much  time 
and  energy  lately  on  these  critical  matters.  It  seems  to  me 
that  my  work  as  a  clergyman  has  suffered.  Nor  can  I  deny  that 
your  book  and  your  letters  have  been  to  me  a  source  of  great 
trouble  of  mind. 

'  My  heart  is  where  it  was,  but  my  head  is  often  confused. 
Let  controversy  rest  a  while.  My  wife  says  I  want  a  holiday  j 


336  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  iv 

I  think  so  myself,  and  we  are  off  in  three  weeks  ;  not,  however, 
I  hope,  before  we  have  welcomed  you  home  again,  and  got  you 
to  open  the  new  Institute,  which  is  already  dazzling  the  eyes  of 
the  village  by  its  size  and  splendour,  and  the  white  paint  that 
Harris  the  builder  has  been  lavishing  upon  it.' 

Ten  days  later,  rather  earlier  than  was  expected,  the  squire 
and  Mrs.  Darcy  were  at  home  again.  Robert  re-entered  the 
great  house  the  morning  after  their  arrival  with  a  strange 
reluctance.  Its  glow  and  magnificence,  the  warm  perfumed  air 
of  the  hall,  brought  back  a  sense  of  old  oppressions,  and  he 
walked  down  the  passage  to  the  library  with  a  sinking  heart. 
There  he  found  the  squire  busy  as  usual  with  one  of  those  fresh 
cargoes  of  books  which  always  accompanied  him  on  any  home- 
ward journey.  He  was  more  brown,  more  wrinkled,  more 
shrunken ;  more  full  of  force,  of  harsh  epigram,  of  grim  anec- 
dote than  ever.  Robert  sat  on  the  edge  of  the  table  laughing 
over  his  stories  of  French  Orientalists,  or  Roman  cardinals,  or 
modern  Greek  professors,  enjoying  the  impartial  sarcasm  which 
one  of  the  greatest  of  savants  was  always  ready  to  pour  out 
upon  his  brethren  of  the  craft. 

The  squire,  however,  was  never  genial  for  a  moment  during 
the  interview.  He  did  not  mention  his  book  nor  Elsmere's 
letter.  But  Elsmere  suspected  in  him  a  good  deal  of  suppressed 
irritability ;  and,  as  after  a  while  he  abruptly  ceased  to  talk, 
the  visit  grew  difficult. 

The  rector  walked  home  feeling  restless  and  depressed.  The 
mind  had  begun  to  work  again.  It  was  only  by  a  great  effort 
that  he  could  turn  his  thoughts  from  the  squire,  and  all  that 
the  squire  had  meant  to  him  during  the  past  year,  and  so  woo 
back  to  himself  '  the  shy  bird  Peace. 

Mr.  Wendover  watched  the  door  close  behind  him,  and  then 
went  back  to  his  work  with  a  gesture  of  impatience. 

'  Once  a  priest,  always  a  priest.  What  a  fool  I  was  to  forget 
it !  You  think  you  make  an  impression  on  the  mystic,  and  at 
the  bottom  there  is  always  something  which  defies  you  and 
common  sense.  "Two  and  two  do  not,  and  shall  not,  make 
four," '  he  said  to  himself,  in  a  mincing  voice  of  angry  sarcasm. 
' "  It  would  give  me  too  much  pain  that  they  should."  Well, 
and  so  I  suppose  what  might  have  been  a  rational  friendship 
will  go  by  the  board  like  everything  else.  What  can  make  the 
man  shilly-shally  in  this  way  ?  He  is  convinced  already,  as  he 
knows — those  later  letters  were  conclusive  !  His  living,  perhaps, 
and  his  work !  Not  for  the  money's  sake — there  never  was 
a  more  incredibly  disinterested  person  born.  But  his  work  ? 
Well,  who  is  to  hinder  his  work  ?  Will  he  be  the  first  parson 
in  the  Church  of  England  who  looks  after  the  poor  and  holds 
his  tongue  ?  If  you  can't  speak  your  mind,  it  is  something  at 
any  rate  to  possess  one — nine-tenths  of  the  clergy  being  with- 
out the  appendage.  But  Elsmere — pshaw  !  he  will  go  muddling 
on  to  the  end  of  the  chapter  ! ' 


CHAP,  xxvi  CRISIS  337 

The  squire,  indeed,  was  like  a  hunter  whose  prey  escapes  him 
at  the  very  moment  of  capture,  and  there  grew  on  him  a  mock- 
ing aggressive  mood  which  Elsmere  often  found  hard  to  bear. 

One  natural  symptom  of  it  was  his  renewed  churlishness  as 
to  all  local  matters.  Elsmere  one  afternoon  spent  an  hour  in 
trying  to  persuade  him  to  open  the  new  Institute. 

'  What  on  earth  do  you  want  me  for  ? '  inquired  Mr.  Wend- 
over, standing  before  the  fire  in  the  library,  the  Medusa  head 
peering  over  his  shoulder.  '  You  know  perfectly  well  that  all 
the  gentry  about  here — I  suppose  you  will  have  some  of  them— 
regard  me  as  an  old  reprobate,  ana  the  poor  people,  I  imagine, 
as  a  kind  of  ogre.  To  me  it  doesn't  matter  a  twopenny  damn — 
I  apologise  ;  it  was  the  Duke  of  Wellington's  favourite  standard 
of  value — but  I  can't  see  what  good  it  can  do  either  you  or  the 
village,  under  the  circumstances,  that  I  should  stand  on  my 
head  for  the  popular  edification.' 

Elsmere,  however,  merely  stood  his  ground,  arguing  and 
bantering,  till  the  squire  gruqgingly  gave  way.  This  time,  after 
he  departed,  Mr.  Wendover,  instead  of  going  to  his  work,  still 
stood  gloomily  ruminating  in  front  of  the  fire.  His  frowning 
eyes  wandered  round  the  great  room  before  him.  For  the  first 
time  he  was  conscious  that  now,  as  soon  as  the  charm  of 
Elsmere's  presence  was  withdrawn,  his  working  hours  were 
doubly  solitary ;  that  his  loneliness  weighed  upon  him  more ; 
and  that  it  mattered  to  him  appreciably  whether  that  young 
man  went  or  stayed.  The  stirring  of  a  new  sensation,  however, 
— unparalleled  since  the  brief  days  when  even  Roger  Wendover 
had  his  friends  and  his  attractions  like  other  men, — was  soon 
lost  in  renewed  chafing  at  Elsmere's  absurdities.  The  squire 
had  been  at  first  perfectly  content — so  he  told  himself — to  limit 
the  field  of  their  intercourse,  and  would  have  been  content  to 
go  on  doing  so.  But  Elsmere  himself  had  invited  freedom  of 
speech  between  them. 

'I  would  have  given  him  my  best,'  Mr.  Wendover  reflected 
impatiently.  '  I  could  have  handed  on  to  him  all  I  shall  never 
use,  and  he  might  use,  admirably.  And  now  we  might  as  well 
be  on  the  terms  we  were  to  begin  with  for  all  the  good  I  get 
out  of  him,  or  he  out  of  me.  Clearly  nothing  but  cowardice  ! 
He  cannot  face  the  intellectual  change,  and  he  must,  I  suppose, 
dread  lest  it  should  afiect  his  work.  Good  God,  what  nonsense  ! 
As  if  any  one  inquired  what  an  English  parson  believed  nowa- 
days, so  long  as  he  performs  all  the  usual  antics  decently  ! ' 

And,  meanwhile,  it  never  occurred  to  the  squire  that  Elsmere 
had  a  wife,  and  a  pious  one.  Catherine  had  been  dropped  out 
of  his  calculation  as  to  Elsmere's  future,  at  a  very  early  stage. 

The  following  afternoon  Robert,  coming  home  from  a  round, 
found  Catherine  out,  and  a  note  awaiting  him  from  the  Hall. 

'  Can  you  and  Mrs.  Elsmere  come  in  to  tea  ? '  wrote  the  squire. 
'  Madame  de  Netteville  is  here,  and  one  or  two  others.' 

z 


338  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  iv 

Robert  grumbled  a  good  deal,  looked  for  Catherine  to  devise 
an  excuse  for  him,  could  not  find  her,  and  at  last  reluctantly  set 
out  again  alone. 

He  was  tired  and  his  mood  was  heavy.  As  he  trudged 
through  the  park  he  never  once  noticed  the  soft  sun-flooded 
distance,  the  shining  loops  of  the  river,  the  feeding  deer,  or 
any  of  those  natural  witcheries  to  which  eye  and  sense  were 
generally  so  responsive.  The  labourers  going  home,  the  children 
— with  aprons  full  of  crab-apples,  and  lips  dyed  by  the  first 
blackberries — who  passed  him,  got  but  an  absent  smile  or  salute 
from  the  rector.  The  interval  of  exaltation  and  recoil  was 
over.  The  ship  of  the  mind  was  once  more  labouring  in  alien 
and  dreary  seas. 

He  roused  himself  to  remember  that  he  had  been  curious  to 
see  Madame  de  Netteville.  She  was  an  old  friend  of  the 
squire's,  the  holder  of  a  London  salon,  much  more  exquisite  and 
select  than  anything  Lady  Charlotte  could  show. 

'  She  had  the  same  thing  in  Paris  before  the  war,'  the  squire 
explained.  '  Benan  gave  me  a  card  to  her.  An  extraordinary 
woman.  No  particular  originality  ;  but  one  of  the  best  persons 
"to  consult  about  ideas,"  like  Joubert's  Madame  de  Beaumont, 
I  ever  saw.  Beceptiveness  itself.  A  beauty,  too,  or  was  one, 
and  a  bit  of  a  sphinx,  which  adds  to  the  attraction.  Mystery 
becomes  a  woman  vastly.  One  suspects  her  of  adventures  just 
enough  to  find  her  society  doubly  piquant.' 

Vincent  directed  him  to  the  upper  terrace,  whither  tea  had 
been  taken.  This  terrace,  which  was  one  of  the  features  of 
Murewell,  occupied  the  top  of  the  yew-clothed  hill  on  which  the 
library  looked  out.  Evelyn  himself  had  planned  it.  Along  its 
upper  side  ran  one  of  the  most  beautiful  of  old  walls,  broken  by 
niches  and  statues,  tapestried  with  roses  and  honeysuckle,  and 
opening  in  the  centre  to  reveal  Evelyn's  darling  conceit  of  all — 
a  semicircular  space,  holding  a  fountain,  and  leading  to  a  grotto. 
The  grotto  had  been  scooped  out  of  the  hill ;  it  was  peopled 
with  dim  figures  of  fauns  and  nymphs  who  showed  white  amid 
its  moist  greenery ;  and  in  front  a  marble  Silence  drooped  over 
the  fountain,  which  held  gold  and  silver  fish  in  a  singularly 
clear  water.  Outside  ran  the  long  stretch  of  level  turf,  edged 
with  a  jewelled  rim  of  flowers ;  and  as  the  hill  fell  steeply 
underneath,  the  terrace  was  like  a  high  green  platform  raised 
into  air,  in  order  that  a  Wendover  might  see  his  domain,  which 
from  thence  lay  for  miles  spread  out  before  him. 

Here,  beside  the  fountain,  were  gathered  the  squire,  Mrs. 
Darcy,  Madame  de  Netteville,  and  two  unknown  men.  One  of 
them  was  introduced  to  Elsmere  as  Mr.  Spooner,  and  recognised 
by  him  as  a  Fellow  of  the  Boyal  Society,  a  famous  mathema- 
tician, sceptic,  bon  vivant,  and  sayer  of  good  things.  The  other 
was  a  young  Liberal  Catholic,  the  author  of  a  remarkable 
collection  of  essays  on  mediaeval  subjects  in  which  the  squire, 
treating  the  man's  opinions  of  course  as  of  no  account,  had 


CHAP,  xxvi  CRISIS  839 

instantly  recognised  the  note  of  the  true  scholar.  A  pale,  small, 
hectic  creature,  possessed  of  that  restless  energy  of  mind  which 
often  goes  with  the  heightened  temperature  of  consumption. 

Robert  took  a  seat  by  Madame  de  Netteville,  whose  appear- 
ance was  picturesqueness  itself.  Her  dress,  a  skilful  mixture  of 
black  and  creamy  yellow,  lay  about  her  in  folds,  as  soft,  as  care- 
lessly effective  as  her  manner.  Her  plumed  hat  shadowed  a  face 
which  was  no  longer  young  in  such  a  way  as  to  hide  all  the 
lines  possible ;  while  the  half-light  brought  admirably  out  the 
rich  dark  smoothness  of  the  tints,  the  black  lustre  of  the  eyes. 
A  delicate  blue-veined  hand  lay  upon  her  knee,  and  Robert  was 
conscious  after  ten  minutes  or  so  that  all  her  movements,  which 
seemed  at  first  merely  slow  and  languid,  were  in  reality  singu- 
larly full  of  decision  and  purpose. 

She  was  not  easy  to  talk  to  on  a  first  acquaintance.  Robert 
felt  that  she  was  studying  him,  and  was  not  so  much  at  his  ease 
as  usual,  partly  owing  to  fatigue  and  mental  worry. 

She  asked  him  little  abrupt  questions  about  the  neighbour- 
hood, his  parish,  his  work,  in  a  soft  tone  which  had,  however,  a 
distinct  aloofness,  even  hauteur.  His  answers,  on  the  other 
hand,  were  often  a  trifle  reckless  and  offhand.  He  was  in  a 
mood  to  be  impatient  with  a  mondaine's  languid  inquiries  into 
clerical  work,  and  it  seemed  to  him  the  squire's  description  had 
been  overdone. 

'  So  you  try  to  civilise  your  peasants,'  she  said  at  last.  '  Does 
it  succeed — is  it  worth  while  ? 

'That  depends  upon  your  general  ideas  of  what  is  worth 
while,'  he  answered  smiling. 

'Oh,  everything  is  worth  while  that  passes  the  time,'  she 
said  hurriedly.  '  The  clergy  of  the  old  regime  went  through  life 
half  asleep.  That  was  their  way  of  passing  it.  Your  way,  being 
a  modern,  is  to  bustle  and  try  experiments.' 

Her  eyes,  half  closed  but  none  the  less  provocative,  ran  over 
Elsmere's  keen  face  and  pliant  frame.  An  atmosphere  of  in- 
tellectual and  social  assumption  enwrapped  her,  which  annoyed 
Robert  in  much  the  same  way  as  Langham's  philosophical  airs 
were  wont  to  do.  He  was  drawn  without  knowing  it  into  a 
match  of  wits  wherein  his  strokes,  if  they  lacked  the  finish  and 
subtlety  of  hers,  showed  certainly  no  lack  of  sharpness  or 
mental  resource.  Madame  de  Netteville's  tone  insensibly 
changed,  her  manner  quickened,  her  great  eyes  gradually 
unclosed. 

Suddenly,  as  they  were  in  the  middle  of  a  skirmish  as  to  the 
reality  of  influence,  Madame  de  Netteville  paradoxically  main- 
taining that  no  human  being  had  ever  really  converted,  trans- 
formed, or  convinced  another,  the  voice  of  young  Wishart, 
shrill  and  tremulous,  rose  above  the  general  level  of  talk. 

'  I  am  quite  ready  ;  I  am  not  the  least  afraid  of  a  definition. 
Theology  is  organised  knowledge  in  the  field  of  religion,  a 
science  like  any  other  science ! ' 


340  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  iv 

'  Certainly,  my  dear  sir,  certainly,'  said  Mr.  Spooner,  leaning 
forward  with  his  hands  round  his  knees,  and  speaking  with  the 
most  elegant  and  good-humoured  sangfroid  imaginable,  'the 
science  of  the  world's  ghosts !  I  cannot  imagine  any  more 
fascinating.' 

'Well,'  said  Madame  de  Netteville  to  Robert,  with  a  deep 
breath,  '  that  was  a  remark  to  have  hurled  at  you  all  at  once 
out  of  doors  on  a  summer's  afternoon  !  Oh,  Mr.  Spooner  ! '  she 
said,  raising  her  voice,  '  don't  play  the  heretic  here  !  There  is 
no  fun  in  it ;  there  are  too  many  with  you.' 

'  I  did  not  begin  it,  my  dear  madam,  and  your  reproach  is 
unjust.  On  one  side  of  me  Archbishop  Manning's  fidus  Achates,' 
and  the  speaker  took  off  his  large  straw  hat  and  gracefully 
waved  it — first  to  the  right,  then  to  the  left.  '  On  the  other,  the 
rector  of  the  parish.  "  Cannon  to  right  of  me,  cannon  to  left  of 
me."  I  submit  my  courage  is  unimpeachable  ! ' 

He  spoke  with  a  smiling  courtesy  as  excessive  as  his  silky 
moustache,  his  long  straw-coloured  beard,  and  his  Panama  hat. 
Madame  de  Netteville  surveyed  him  with  cool  critical  eyes. 
Eobert  smiled  slightly,  acknowledged  the  bow,  but  did  not 
speak. 

Mr.  Wishart  evidently  took  no  heed  of  anything  but  his  own 
thoughts.  He  sat  bolt  upright  with  shining  excited  eyes. 

'Ah,  I  remember  that  article  of  yours  in  the  Fortnightly/ 
How  you  sceptics  miss  the  point ! ' 

And  out  came  a  stream  of  argument  and  denunciation  which 
had  probably  lain  lava-hot  at  the  heart  of  the  young  convert 
for  years,  waiting  for  such  a  moment  as  this,  when  he  had 
before  him  at  close  quarters  two  of  the  most  famous  antagonists 
of  his  faith.  The  outburst  was  striking,  but  certainly  unpardon- 
ably  ill-timed.  Madame  de  Netteville  retreated  into  herself 
with  a  shrug.  Robert,  in  whom  a  sore  nerve  had  been  set 
jarring,  did  his  utmost  to  begin  his  talk  with  her  again. 

In  vain! — for  the  squire  struck  in.  He  had  been  sitting 
huddled  together — his  cynical  eyes  wandering  from  Wishart  to 
Elsmere — when  suddenly  some  extravagant  remark  of  the 
young  Catholic,  and  Robert's  effort  to  edge  away  from  the 
conversation,  caught  his  attention  at  the  same  moment.  His 
face  hardened,  and  in  his  nasal  voice  he  dealt  a  swift  epigram 
at  Mr.  Wishart,  which  for  the  moment  left  the  young  disputant 
floundering. 

But  only  for  the  moment.  In  another  minute  or  two  the 
argument,  begun  so  casually,  had  developed  into  a  serious  trial 
of  strength,  in  which  the  squire  and  young  Wishart  took  the 
chief  parts,  while  Mr.  Spooner  threw  in  a  laugh  and  a  sarcasm 
here  and  there. 

And  as  long  as  Mr.  Wendover  talked,  Madame  de  Netteville 
listened.  Robert's  restless  repulsion  to  the  whole  incident,  his 
passionate  wish  to  escape  from  these  phrases  and  illustrations 
and  turns  of  argument  which  were  all  so  wearisomely  stale  and 


CHAP,  xxvi  CRISIS  341 

familiar  to  him,  found  no  support  in  her.  Mrs.  Darcy  dared 
not  second  his  attempts  at  chat,  for  Mr.  Wendover,  on  the  rare 
occasions  when  he  held  forth,  was  accustomed  to  be  listened  to ; 
and  Elsmere  was  of  too  sensitive  a  social  fibre  to  break  up  the 
party  by  an  abrupt  exit,  which  could  only  have  been  interpreted 
in  one  way. 

So  he  stayed,  and  perforce  listened,  but  in  complete  silence. 
None  of  Mr.  Wendover's  side-hits  touched  him.  Only  as  the 
talk  went  on,  the  rector  in  the  background  got  paler  and  paler  ; 
his  eyes,  as  they  passed  from  the  mobile  face  of  the  Catholic 
convert,  already,  for  those  who  knew,  marked  with  the  signs  of 
death,  to  the  bronzed  visage  of  the  squire,  grew  duller — more 
instinct  with  a  slowly-dawning  despair. 

Half  an  hour  later  he  was  once  more  on  the  road  leading  to 
the  park  gate.  He  had  a  vague  memory  that  at  parting  the 
squire  had  shown  him  the  cordiality  of  one  suddenly  anxious  to 
apologise  by  manner,  if  not  by  word.  Otherwise  everthing  was 
forgotten.  He  was  only  anxious,  half  dazed  as  he  was,  to  make 
out  wherein  lay  the  vital  difference  between  his  present  self  and 
the  Elsmere  who  had  passed  along  that  road  an  hour  before. 

He  had  heard  a  conversation  on  religious  topics,  wherein 
nothing  was  new  to  him,  nothing  affected  him  intellectually  at 
all.  What  was  there  in  that  to  break  the  spring  of  life  like 
this  ?  He  stood  still,  heavily  trying  to  understand  himself. 

Then  gradually  it  became  clear  to  him.  A  month  ago,  every 
word  of  that  hectic  young  pleader  for  Christ  and  the  Christian 
certainties  would  have  roused  in  him  a  leaping  passionate 
sympathy — the  heart's  yearning  assent,  even  when  the  intellect 
was  most  perplexed.  Now  that  inmost  strand  had  given  way. 
Suddenly  the  disintegrating  force  he  had  been  so  pitifully,  so 
blindly,  holding  at  bay  had  penetrated  once  for  all  into  the 
sanctuary  !  What  had  happened  to  him  had  been  the  first  real 
failure  of  feeling,  the  first  treachery  of  the  heart.  Wishart's 
hopes  and  hatreds,  and  sublime  defiances  of  man's  petty 
faculties,  had  aroused  in  him  no  echo,  no  response.  His  soul 
had  been  dead  within  him. 

As  he  gained  the  shelter  of  the  wooded  lane  beyond  the  gate 
it  seemed  to  Robert  that  he  was  going  through,  once  more,  that 
old  fierce  temptation  of  Bunyan's, — 

'  For  after  the  Lord  had  in  this  manner  thus  graciously 
delivered  me,  and  had  set  me  down  so  sweetly  in  the  faith  of 
His  Holy  Gospel,  and  had  given  me  such  strong  consolation 
and  blessed  evidence  from  heaven,  touching  my  interest  in  His 
love  through  Christ,  the  tempter  came  upon  me  again,  and  that 
with  a  more  grievous  and  dreadful  temptation  than  before. 
And  that  was,  "  To  sell  and  part  with  this  most  blessed  Christ ; 
to  exchange  Him  for  the  things  of  life,  for  anything ! "  The 
temptation  lay  upon  me  for  the  space  of  a  year,  and  did  follow 
me  so  continually  that  I  was  not  rid  of  it  one  day  in  a  month  : 


342  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  iv 

no,  not  sometimes  one  hour  in  many  days  together,  for  it  did 
always,  in  almost  whatever  I  thought,  intermix  itself  therewith, 
in  such  sort  that  I  could  neither  eat  my  food,  stoop  for  a  pin, 
chop  a  stick,  or  cast  mine  eyes  to  look  on  this  or  that,  but  still 
the  temptation  would  come  :  "  Sell  Christ  for  this,  or  sell  Christ 
for  that,  sell  Him,  sell  Him  ! '" 

Was  this  what  lay  before  the  minister  of  God  now  in  this 
selva  oscura  of  life  ?  The  selling  of  the  Master,  of  '  the  love  so 
sweet,  the  unction  spiritual,'  for  an  intellectual  satisfaction,  the 
ravaging  of  all  the  fair  places  of  the  heart  by  an  intellectual 
need ! 

And  still  through  all  the  despair,  all  the  revolt,  all  the  pain, 
which  made  the  summer  air  a  darkness,  and  closed  every  sense 
in  him  to  the  evening  beauty,  he  felt  the  irresistible  march  and 
pressure  of  the  new  instincts,  the  new  forces,  which  life  and 
thought  had  been  calling  into  being.  The  words  of  St. 
Augustine  which  he  had  read  to  Catherine,  taken  in  a  strange 
new  sense,  came  back  .to  him — '  Commend  to  the  keeping  of 
the  Truth  whatever  the  Truth  hath  given  thee,  and  thou  shalt 
lose  nothing ! ' 

Was  it  the  summons  of  Truth  which  was  rending  the  whole 
nature  in  this  way  ? 

Robert  stood  still,  and  with  his  hands  locked  behind  him, 
and  his  face  turned  like  the  face  of  a  blind  man  towards  a 
world  of  which  it  saw  nothing,  went  through  a  desperate 
catechism  of  himself. 

'  Do  I  believe  in  God  ?  Surely,  surely  !  "  Though  He  slay  me 
yet  will  I  trust  in  Him  !  "  Do  1  believe  in  Christ  ?  Yes, — in  the 
teacher,  the  martyr,  the  symbol  to  us  Westerns  of  all  things 
heavenly  and  abiding,  the  image  and  pledge  of  the  invisible  life 
of  the  spirit, — with  all  my  soul  and  all  my  mind  ! 

'  But  in  the  Man-God,  the  Word  from  Eternity, — in  a  wonder- 
working Christ,  in  a  risen  and  ascended  Jesus,  in  the  living 
Intercessor  and  Mediator  for  the  lives  of  His  doomed  brethren  ? ' 

He  waited,  conscious  that  it  was  the  crisis  of  his  history, 
and  there  rose  in  him,  as  though  articulated  one  by  one  by  an 
audible  voice,  words  of  irrevocable  meaning. 

'  Every  human  soul  in  which  the  voice  of  God  makes  itself 
felt,  enjoys,  equally  with  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  the  divine  sonship, 
and  "  miracles  do  not  happen  !  " ' 

It  was  done.  He  felt  for  the  moment  as  Bunyan  did  after 
his  lesser  defeat. 

'  Now  was  the  battle  won,  and  down  fell  I  as  a  bird  that  is 
shot  from  the  top  of  a  tree  into  great  guilt  and  fearful  despair 
Thus  getting _ out  of  my  bed  I  went  moping  in  the  field;  but 
God  knows  with  as  heavy  an  heart  as  mortal  man  I  think  could 
bear,  where  for  the  space  of  two  hours  I  was  like  a  man  bereft 
of  life.' 

All  these  years  of  happy  spiritual  certainty,  of  rejoicing 
oneness  with  Christ,  to  end  in  this  wreck  and  loss  !  Was  not 


CIIAP.  xxvi  CRISIS  343 

this  indeed  lil  gran  rifiuto' — the  greatest  of  which  human 
daring  is  capable  ?  The  lane  darkened  round  him.  Not  a  soul 
was  in  sight.  The  only  sounds  were  the  sounds  of  a  gently- 
breathing  nature,  sounds  of  birds  and  swaying  branches  and 
intermittent  gusts  of  air  rustling  through  the  gorse  and  the 
drifts  of  last  year's  leaves  in  the  wood  beside  him.  He  moved 
mechanically  onward,  and  presently,  after  the  first  flutter  of 
desolate  terror  had  passed  away,  with  a  new  inrushing  sense 
which  seemed  to  him  a  sense  of  liberty — of  infinite  expansion. 

Suddenly  the  trees  before  him  thinned,  the  ground  sloped 
away,  and  there  to  the  left  on  the  westernmost  edge  of  the  hill 
lay  the  square  stone  rectory,  its  windows  open  to  the  evening 
coolness,  a  white  flutter  of  pigeons  round  the  dovecote  on  the 
side  lawn,  the  gold  of  the  August  wheat  in  the  great  cornfield 
showing  against  the  heavy  girdle  of  oak-wood. 

Robert  stood  gazing  at  it — the  home  consecrated  by  love, 
by  effort,  by  faith.  The  high  alternations  of  intellectual  and 
spiritual  debate,  the  strange  emerging  sense  of  deliverance, 
gave  way  to  a  most  bitter  human  pang  of  misery. 

'  0  God  I    My  wife — my  work  ! ' 

.  .  .  There  was  a  sound  of  a  voice  calling — Catherine's  voice 
calling  for  him.  He  leant  against  the  gate  of  the  wood-path, 
struggling  sternly  with  himself.  This  was  no  simple  matter  of 
his  own  intellectual  consistency  or  happiness.  Another's  whole 
life  was  concerned.  Any  precipitate  speech,  or  hasty  action, 
would  be  a  crime.  A  man  is  bound  above  all  things  to  protect 
those  who  depend  on  him  from  his  own  immature  or  revocable 
impulses.  Not  a  word  yet,  till  this  sense  of  convulsion  and 
upheaval  had  passed  away,  and  the  mind  was  once  more  its 
own  master. 

He  opened  the  gate  and  went  towards  her.  She  was  strolling 
along  the  path  looking  out  for  him,  one  delicate  hand  gathering 
up  her  long  evening  dress — that  very  same  black  brocade  she 
had  worn  in  the  old  days  at  Burwood — the  other  playing  with 
their  Dandie  Dinmont  puppy  who  was  leaping  beside  her.  As 
she  caught  sight  of  him,  there  was  the  flashing  smile,  the  hurry- 
ing step.  And  he  felt  he  could  but  just  drag  himself  to  meet 
her. 

'  Robert,  how  long  you  have  been  !  I  thought  you  must  have 
stayed  to  dinner  after  all !  And  how  tired  you  seem  ! ' 

'  I  had  a  long  walk,'  he  said,  catching  her  hand,  as  it  slipped 
itself  under  his  arm,  and  clinging  to  it  as  though  to  a  support. 
'  And  I  am  tired.  There  is  no  use  whatever  in  denying  it. 

His  voice  was  light,  but  if  it  had  not  been  so  dark  she  must 
have  been  startled  by  his  face.  As  they  went  on  towards  the 
house,  however,  she  scolding  him  for  over-walking,  he  won  his 
battle  with  himself.  He  went  through  the  evening  so  that  even 
Catherine's  jealous  eyes  saw  nothing  but  extra  fatigue.  In  the 
most  desperate  straits  of  life  love  is  still  the  fountain  of  all 
endurance,  and  if  ever  a  man  loved  it  was  Robert  Elsmere. 


344  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  iv 

But  that  night,  as  he  lay  sleepless  in  their  quiet  room,  with 
the  window  open  to  the  stars  and  to  the  rising  gusts  of  wind, 
which  blew  the  petals  of  the  cluster-rose  outside  in  drifts  of 
'  fair  weather  snow '  on  to  the  window-sill,  he  went  through  an 
agony  which  no  words  can  adequately  describe. 

He  must,  of  course,  give  up  his  living  and  his  orders.  His 
standards  and  judgments  had  always  been  simple  and  plain  in 
these  respects.  In  other  men  it  might  be  right  and  possible 
that  they  should  live  on  in  the  ministry  of  the  Church,  doing 
the  humane  and  charitable  work  of  the  Church,  while  refusing 
assent  to  the  intellectual  and  dogmatic  framework  on  which 
the  Church  system  rests ;  but  for  himself  it  would  be  neither 
right  nor  wrong,  but  simply  impossible.  He  did  not  argue  or 
reason  about  it.  There  was  a  favourite  axiom  of  Mr.  Grey's 
which  had  become  part  of  his  pupil's  spiritual  endowment, 
and  which  was  perpetually  present  to  him  at  this  crisis  of 
his  life,  in  the  spirit,  if  not  in  the  letter — '  Conviction  is  the 
Conscience  of  the  Mind.'  And  with  this  intellectual  conscience 
he  was  no  more  capable  of  trifling  than  with  the  moral  con- 
science. 

The  night  passed  away.  How  the  rare  intermittent  sounds 
impressed  themselves  upon  him  ! — the  stir  of  the  child's  waking 
soon  after  midnight  in  the  room  overhead ;  the  cry  of  the  owls 
on  the  oak-wood  ;  the  purring  of  the  night- jars  on  the  common  ; 
the  morning  chatter  of  the  swallows  round  the  eaves. 

With  the  first  invasion  of  the  dawn  Robert  raised  himself 
and  looked  at  Catherine.  She  was  sleeping  with  that  light 
sound  sleep  which  belongs  to  health  of  body  and  mind,  one 
hand  under  her  face,  the  other  stretched  out  in  soft  relaxation 
beside  her.  Her  husband  hung  over  her  in  a  bewilderment  of 
feeling.  Before  him  passed  all  sorts  of  incoherent  pictures  of 
the  future  ;  the  mind  was  caught  by  all  manner  of  incongruous 
details  in  that  saddest  uprooting  which  lay  before  him.  How 
her  sleep,  her  ignorance,  reproached  him  !  He  thought  of  the 
wreck  of  all  her  pure  ambitions — for  him,  for  their  common 
work,  for  the  people  she  had  come  to  love ;  the  ruin  of  her  life 
of  charity  and  tender  usefulness,  the  darkening  of  all  her  hopes, 
the  shaking  of  all  her  trust.  Two  years  of  devotion,  of  exquisite 
self-surrender,  had  brought  her  to  this  !  It  was  for  this  he  had 
lured  her  from  the  shelter  of  her  hills,  for  this  she  had  opened 
to  him  all  her  sweet  stores  of  faith,  all  the  deepest  springs  of 
her  womanhood.  Oh,  how  she  must  suffer  !  The  thought  of  it 
and  his  own  helplessness  wrung  his  heart. 

Oh,  could  he  keep  her  love  through  it  all  1  There  was  an 
unspeakable  dread  mingled  with  his  grief — his  remorse.  It 
had  been  there  for  months.  In  her  eyes  would  not  only  pain 
but  sin  divide  them  ?  Could  he  possibly  prevent  her  whole 
relation  to  him  from  altering  and  dwindling  ? 

It  was  to  be  the  problem  of  his  remaining  life.  With  a  great 
cry  of  the  soul  to  that  God  it  yearned  and  felt  for  through  all 


CHAP,  xxv!  i  CRISIS  345 

the  darkness  and  ruin  which  encompassed  it,  he  laid  his  hand 
on  hers  with  the  timidest  passing  touch. 

'  Catherine,   I  will  make  amends  !     My  wife,  I  will  make 
amends  ! ' 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

THE  next  morning  Catherine,  finding  that  Robert  still  slept  on 
after  their  usual  waking  time,  and  remembering  his  exhaustion 
of  the  night  before,  left  him  softly,  and  kept  the  house  quiet 
that  he  might  not  be  disturbed.  She  was  in  charge  of  the  now 
toddling  Mary  in  the  dining-room  when  the  door  opened  and 
Robert  appeared. 

At  sight  of  him  she  sprang  up  with  a  half -cry ;  the  face 
seemed  to  have  lost  all  its  fresh  colour,  its  look  of  sun  and  air  ; 
the  eyes  were  sunk ;  the  lips  and  chin  lined  and  drawn.  It 
was  like  a  face  from  which  the  youth  had  suddenly  been  struck 
out. 

'  Robert ! '  but  her  question  died  on  her  lips. 

'  A  bad  night,  darling,  and  a  bad  headache,'  he  said,  groping 
his  way,  as  it  seemed  to  her,  to  the  table,  his  hand  leaning  on 
her  arm.  '  Give  me  some  breakfast.' 

She  restrained  herself  at  once,  put  him  into  an  armchair  by 
the  window,  and  cared  for  him  in  her  tender  noiseless  way. 
But  she  had  grown  almost  as  pale  as  he,  and  her  heart  was  like 
lead. 

'  Will  you  send  me  off  for  the  day  to  Thurston  ponds  ? '  he 
said  presently,  trying  to  smile  with  lips  so  stiff  and  nerveless 
that  the  will  had  small  control  over  them. 

'Can  you  walk  so  far?  You  did  overdo  it  yesterday,  you 
know.  You  have  never  got  over  Mile  End,  Robert.' 

But  her  voice  had  a  note  in  it  which  in  his  weakness  he  could 
hardly  bear.  He  thirsted  to  be  alone  again,  to  be  able  to  think 
over  quietly  what  was  best  for  her — for  them  both.  There 
must  be  a  next  step,  and  in  her  neighbourhood  he  was  too 
feeble,  too  tortured,  to  decide  upon  it. 

'  No  more,  dear — no  more,'  he  said  impatiently,  as  she  tried 
to  feed  him  ;  then  he  added  as  he  rose  :  '  Don't  make  arrange- 
ments for  our  going  next  week,  Catherine  ;  it  can't  be  so  soon.' 

Catherine  looked  at  him  with  eyes  of  utter  dismay.  The 
sustaining  hope  of  all  these  difficult  weeks,  which  had  slipped 
with  such  terrible  unexpectedness  into  their  happy  life,  was 
swept  away  from  her. 

'  Robert,  you  ought  to  go.' 

'  I  have  too  many  things  to  arrange,'  he  said  sharply,  almost 
irritably.  Then  his  tone  changed  :  '  Don't  urge  it,  Catherine.' 

His  eyes  in  their  weariness  seemed  to  entreat  her  not  to 
argue.  She  stooped  and  kissed  him,  her  lips  trembling. 


346  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  iv 

'  When  do  you  want  to  go  to  Thurston  ? ' 

'As  soon  as  possible.  Can  you  find  me  my  fishing-basket 
and  get  me  some  sandwiches  ?  I  shall  only  lounge  there  and 
take  it  easy.' 

She  did  everything  for  him  that  wifely  hands  could  do.  Then 
when  his  fishing-basket  was  strapped  on,  and  his  lunch  was 
slipped  into  the  capacious  pocket  of  the  well-worn  shooting 
coat,  she  threw  her  arms  round  him. 

'  Robert,  you  will  come  away  soon.' 

He  roused  himself  and  kissed  her. 

'  I  will,'  he  said  simply,  withdrawing,  however,  from  her  grasp, 
as  though  he  could  not  bear  those  close  pleading  eyes.  '  Good- 
bye !  I  shall  be  back  some  time  in  the  afternoon.' 

From  her  post  beside  the  study  window  she  watched  him 
take  the  short  cut  across  the  cornfield.  She  was  miserable,  and 
all  at  sea.  A  week  ago  he  had  been  so  like  himself  again,  and 

now !  Never  had  she  seen  him  in  anything  like  this  state 

of  physical  and  mental  collapse. 

'  Oh,  Robert,'  she  cried  under  her  breath,  with  an  abandon- 
ment like  a  child's,  strong  soul  that  she  was,  '  why  won't  you 
tell  me,  dear  ?  Why  won't  you  let  me  share  ?  I  might  help  you 
through — I  might.' 

She  supposed  he  must  be  again  in  trouble  of  mind.  A  weaker 
woman  would  have  implored,  tormented,  till  she  knew  all. 
Catherine's  very  strength  and  delicacy  of  nature,  and  that 
respect  which  was  inbred  in  her  for  the  sacra  of  the  inner  life, 
stood  in  her  way.  She  could  not  catechise  him,  and  force  his 
confidence  on  this  subject  of  all  others.  It  must  be  given  freely. 
And  oh  !  it  was  so  long  in  coming  ! 

Surely,  surely,  it  must  be  mainly  physical,  the  result  of  over- 
strain— expressing  itself  in  characteristic  mental  worry,  j  ust  as 
daily  life  reproduces  itself  in  dreams.  The  worldly  man  suffers 
at  such  times  through  worldly  things,  the  religious  man  through 
his  religion.  Comforting  herself  a  little  with  thoughts  of  this 
kind,  and  with  certain  more  or  less  vague  preparations  for 
departure,  Catherine  got  through  the  morning  as  best  she  might. 

Meanwhile,  Robert  was  trudging  along  to  Thurston  under  a 
sky  which,  after  a  few  threatening  showers,  promised  once 
more  to  be  a  sky  of  intense  heat.  He  had  with  him  all  the 
tackle  necessary  for  spooning  pike,  a  sport  the  novelty  and 
success  of  which  had  hugely  commended  it  the  year  before  to 
those  Esau-like  instincts  Murewell  had  so  much  developed  in 
him. 

And  now — oh  the  weariness  of  the  August  warmth,  and  the 
long  stretches  of  sandy  road  !  By  the  time  he  reached  the  ponds 
he  was  tired  out ;  but  instead  of  stopping  at  the  largest  of  the 
three,  where  a  picturesque  group  of  old  brick  cottages  brought 
a  reminder  of  man  and  his  works  into  the  prairie  solitude  of 
the  common,  he  pushed  on  to  a  smaller  pool  just  beyond,  now 
hidden  in  a  green  cloud  of  birch-wood.  Here,  after  pushing  his 


CHAP,  xxvn  CRISIS  347 

way  through  the  closely-set  trees,  he  made  some  futile  attempts 
at  fishing,  only  to  put  up  his  rod  long  before  the  morning  was 
over  and  lay  it  beside  him  on  the  bank.  And  there  he  sat  for 
hours,  vaguely  watching  the  reflection  of  the  clouds,  the  gambols 
and  quarrels  of  the  waterfowl,  the  ways  of  the  birds,  the  alter- 
nations of  sun  and  shadow  on  the  softly-moving  trees, — the  real 
self  of  him  passing  all  the  while  through  an  interminable  inward 
drama,  starting  from  the  past,  stretching  to  the  future,  steeped 
in  passion,  in  pity,  in  regret. 

He  thought  or  the  feelings  with  which  he  had  taken  orders, 
of  Oxford  scenes  and  Oxford  persons,  of  the  efforts,  the  pains, 
the  successes  of  his  first  year  at  Murewell.  What  a  ghastly 
mistake  it  had  all  been  !  He  felt  a  kind  of  sore  contempt  for 
himself,  for  his  own  lack  of  prescience,  of  self-knowledge.  His 
life  looked  to  him  so  shallow  and  worthless.  How  does  a  man 
ever  retrieve  such  a  false  step  ?  He  groaned  aloud  as  he  thought 
of  Catherine  linked  to  one  born  to  defeat  her  hopes,  and  all  that 
natural  pride  that  a  woman  feels  in  the  strength  and  consistency 
of  the  man  she  loves.  As  he  sat  there  by  the  water  he  touched 
the  depths  of  self-humiliation. 

As  to  religious  belief,  everything  was  a  chaos.  What  might 
be  to  him  the  ultimate  forms  and  condition  of  thought,  the 
tired  mind  was  quite  incapable  of  divining.  To  every  stage  in 
the  process  of  destruction  it  was  feverishly  alive.  But  its  form- 
ative energy  was  for  the  moment  gone.  The  foundations  were 
swept  away,  and  everything  must  be  built  up  afresh.  Only  the 
habit  of  faith  held,  the  close  instinctive  clinging  to  a  Power 
beyond  sense — a  Goodness,  a  Will,  not  man's.  The  soul  had 
been  stripped  of  its  old  defences,  but  at  his  worst  there  was 
never  a  moment  when  Elsmere  felt  himself  utterly  forsaken. 

But  his  people — his  work  !  Every  now  and  then  into  the 
fragmentary  debate  still  going  on  within  him  there  would  flash 
little  pictures  of  Murewell.  The  green,  with  the  sun  on  the 
house-fronts,  the  awning  over  the  village  shop,  the  vane  on  the 
old  '  Manor-house,'  the  familiar  figures  at  the  doors  ;  his  church, 
with  every  figure  in  the  Sunday  congregation  as  clear  to  him  as 
though  he  were  that  moment  in  the  pulpit ;  the  children  he  had 
taught,  the  sick  he  had  nursed,  this  or  that  weather-beaten  or 
brutalised  peasant  whose  history  he  knew,  whose  tragic  secrets 
lie  had  learnt, — all  these  memories  and  images  clung  about  him 
as  though  with  ghostly  hands,  asking,  '  Why  will  you  desert  us  ? 
You  are  ours — stay  with  us  ! ' 

Then  his  thoughts  would  run  over  the  future,  dwelling,  with 
a  tense  realistic  sharpness,  on  every  detail  which  lay  before 
him — the  arrangements  with  his  locum  tenens,  the  interview 
with  the  bishop,  the  parting  witli  the  rectory.  It  even  occurred 
to  him  to  wonder  what  must  be  done  with  Martha  and  his 
mother's  cottage. 

His  mother  ?  As  he  thought  of  her  a  wave  of  unutterable 
longing  rose  and  broke.  The  difficult  tears  stood  in  his  eyes. 


348  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  iv 

He  had  a  strange  conviction  that  at  this  crisis  of  his  life  she  of 
all  human  beings  would  have  understood  him  best. 

When  would  the  squire  know  ?  He  pictured  the  interview 
with  him,  divining,  with  the  same  abnormal  clearness  of  inward 
vision,  Mr.  Wendover's  start  of  mingled  triumph  and  impatience 
— triumph  in  the  new  recruit,  impatience  with  the  Quixotic 
folly  which  could  lead  a  man  to  look  upon  orthodox  dogma  as  a 
thing  real  enough  to  be  publicly  renounced,  or  clerical  pledges 
as  more  than  a  form  of  words.  So  henceforth  he  was  on  the 
same  side  with  the  squire,  held  by  an  indiscriminating  world  as 
bound  to  the  same  negations,  the  same  hostilities  !  The  thought 
roused  in  him  a  sudden  fierceness  of  moral  repugnance.  The 
squire  and  Edward  Langham — they  were  the  only  sceptics  of 
whom  he  had  ever  had  close  and  personal  experience.  And 
with  all  his  old  affection  for  Langham,  all  his  frank  sense  of 
pliancy  in  the  squire's  hands,  yet  in  this  strait  of  life  how  he* 
shrinks  from  them  both ! — souls  at  war  with  life  and  man, 
without  holiness,  without  perfume  ! 

Is  it  the  law  of  things  ?  '  Once  loosen  a  man's  religio,  once 
fling  away  the  old  binding  elements,  the  old  traditional  restraints 
which  have  made  him  what  he  is,  and  moral  deterioration  is 
certain.'  How  often  he  has  heard  it  said  !  How  often  he  has 
endorsed  it !  Is  it  true  ?  His  heart  grows  cold  within  him. 
What  good  man  can  ever  contemplate  with  patience  the  loss, 
not  of  friends  or  happiness,  but  of  his  best  self  ?  What  shall  it 
profit  a  man,  indeed,  if  he  gain  the  whole  world — the  whole 
world  of  knowledge  and  speculation — and  lose  his  own  soul  1 

And  then,  for  his  endless  comfort,  there  rose  on  the  inward 
eye  the  vision  of  an  Oxford  lecture  room,  of  a  short  sturdy 
figure,  of  a  great  brow  over  honest  eyes,  of  words  alive  with 
moral  passion,  of  thought  instinct  with  the  beauty  of  holiness. 
Thank  God  for  the  saint  in  Henry  Grey !  Thinking  of  it, 
Robert  felt  his  own  self-respect  re-born. 

Oh  !  to  see  Grey  in  the  flesh,  to  get  his  advice,  his  approval ! 
Even  though  it  was  the  depth  of  vacation,  Grey  was  so  closely 
connected  with  the  town,  as  distinguished  from  the  university, 
life  of  Oxford,  it  might  be  quite  possible  to  find  him  at  home. 
Elsmere  suddenly  determined  to  find  out  at  once  if  he  could  be 
seen. 

And  if  so,  he  would  go  over  to  Oxford  at  once.  This  should 
be  the  next  step,  and  he  would  say  nothing  to  Catherine  till 
afterwards.  He  felt  himself  so  dull,  so  weary,  so  resourceless. 
Grey  should  help  and  counsel  him,  should  send  him  back  with  a 
clearer  brain — a  quicker  ingenuity  of  love,  better  furnished 
against  her  pain  and  his  own. 

Then  everything  else  was  forgotten ;  and  he  thought  of 
nothing  but  that  grisly  moment  of  waking  in  the  empty  room, 
when  still  believing  it  night,  he  had  put  out  his  hand  for  his 
wife,  and  with  a  superstitious  pang  had  felt  himself  alone.  His 
heart  torn  with  a  hundred  inarticulate  cries  of  memory  and 


CHAP,  xxvn  CRISIS  349 

grief,  he  sat  on  beside  the  water,  unconscious  of  the  passing 
of  time,  his  gray  eyes  staring  sightlessly  at  the  wood-pigeons 
as  they  flew  past  him,  at  the  occasional  flash  of  a  kingfisher, 
at  the  moving  panorama  of  summer  clouds  above  the  trees 
opposite. 

At  last  he  was  startled  back  to  consciousness  by  the  fall  of 
a  few  heavy  drops  of  warm  rain.  He  looked  at  his  watch.  It 
was  nearly  four  o'clock.  He  rose,  stiff  and  cramped  with  sitting, 
and  at  the  same  instant  he  saw  beyond  the  birchwood  on  the 
open  stretch  of  common  a  boy's  figure,  which,  after  a  step  or 
two,  he  recognised  as  Ned  Irwin. 

'  You  here,  Ned  ? '  he  said,  stopping,  the  pastoral  temper  in 
him  reasserting  itself  at  once.  '  Why  aren't  you  harvesting  1 ' 

'Please,  sir,  I  finished  with  the  Hall  medders  yesterday,  and 
Mr.  Carter's  job  don't  begin  till  to-morrow.  He's  got  a  machine 
coming  from  Witley,  he  hev,  and  they  won't  let  him  have  it 
till  Thursday,  so  I've  been  out  after  things  for  the  club.' 

And  opening  the  tin  box  strapped  on  his  back,  he  showed  the 
day's  capture  of  butterflies,  and  some  belated  birds'  eggs,  the 
plunder  of  a  bit  of  common  where  the  turf  for  the  winter's 
burning  was  just  being  cut. 

'Goatsucker,  linnet,  stonechat,'  said  the  rector,  fingering 
them.  '  Well  done  for  August,  Ned.  If  you  haven  t  got  any- 
thing better  to  do  with  them,  give  them  to  that  small  boy  of 
Mr.  Carter's  that's  been  ill  so  long.  He'd  thank  you  for  them,  I 
know.' 

The  lad  nodded  with  a  guttural  sound  of  assent.  Then  his 
new-born  scientific  ardour  seemed  to  struggle  with  his  rustic 
costiveness  of  speech. 

'I've  been  just  watching  a  queer  creetur,'  he  said  at  last 
hurriedly  ;  '  I  b'leeve  he's  that  un.' 

And  he  pulled  out  a  well-thumbed  handbook,  and  pointed  to 
a  cut  of  the  grasshopper  warbler. 

'Whereabouts?'  asked  Robert,  wondering  the  while  at  his 
own  start  of  interest. 

'In  that  bit  of  common  t'other  side  the  big  pond,'  said  Ned, 
pointing,  his  brick-red  countenance  kindling  into  suppressed 
excitement. 

'  Come  and  show  me  ! '  said  the  rector,  and  the  two  went  off 
together.  And  sure  enough,  after  a  little  beating  about,  they 
heard  the  note  which  had  roused  the  lad's  curiosity,  the  loud 
whirr  of  a  creature  that  should  have  been  a  grasshopper,  and 
was  not. 

They  stalked  the  bird  a  few  yards,  stooping  and  crouching, 
Robert's  eager  hand  on  the  boy's  arm,  whenever  the  clumsy 
rustic  movements  made  too  much  noise  among  the  underwood. 
They  watched  it  uttering  its  jarring  imitative  note  on  bush 
after  bush,  just  dropping  to  the  ground  as  they  came  near,  and 
flitting  a  yard  or  two  farther,  but  otherwise  showing  no  sign  of 
alarm  at  their  presence.  Then  suddenly  the  impulse  which 


350  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  rv 

had  been  leading  him  on  died  in  the  rector.  He  stood  upright, 
with  a  long  sigh. 

'I  must  go  home,  Ned,'  he  said  abruptly.  'Where  are  you 
off  to?' 

'  Please,  sir,  there's  my  sister  at  the  cottage,  her  as  married 
Jim,  the  under-keeper.  I  be  going  there  for  my  tea.' 

'  Come  along,  then,  we  can  go  together.' 

They  trudged  along  in  silence  ;  presently  Robert  turned  on 
his  companion. 

'  Ned,  this  natural  history  has  been  a  fine  thing  for  you,  my 
lad ;  mind  you  stick  to  it.  That  and  good  work  will  make  a 
man  of  you.  When  I  go  away ' 

The  boy  started  and  stopped  dead,  his  dumb  animal  eyes 
fixed  on  his  companion. 

'You  know  I  shall  soon  be  going  off  on  my  holiday,'  said 
Robert,  smiling  faintly;  adding  hurriedly  as  the  boy's  face 
resumed  its  ordinary  expression :  '  But  some  day,  Ned,  I  shall 
go  for  good.  I  don't  know  whether  you've  been  depending  on 
me — you  and  some  of  the  others.  I  think  perhaps  you  have.  If 
so,  don't  depend  on  me,  Ned,  any  more !  It  must  all  come  to 
an  end — everything  must — everything  ! — except  the  struggle  to 
be  a  man  in  the  world,  and  not  a  beast — to  make  one's  heart 
clean  and  soft,  and  not  hard  and  vile.  That  is  the  one  thing 
that  matters,  and  lasts.  Ah,  never  forget  that,  Ned !  Never 
forget  it ! ' 

He  stood  still,  towering  over  the  slouching  thick-set  form 
beside  him,  his  pale  intensity  of  look  giving  a  rare  dignity  and 
beauty  to  the  face  which  owed  so  little  of  its  attractiveness  to 
comeliness  of  feature.  He  had  the  makings  of  a  true  shepherd 
of  men,  and  his  mind-  as  he  spoke  was  crossed  by  a  hundred 
different  currents  of  feeling — bitterness,  pain,  and  yearning 
unspeakable.  No  man  could  feel  the  wrench  that  lay  before 
him  more  than  he. 

Ned  Irwin  said  not  a  word.  His  heavy  lids  were  dropped 
over  his  deep-set  eye ;  he  stood  motionless,  nervously  fiddling 
with  his  butterfly  net — awkwardness,  and,  as  it  seemed,  irre- 
sponsiveness,  in  his  whole  attitude. 

Robert  gathered  himself  together. 

'Well,  good-night,  my  lad,'  he  said  with  a  change  of  tone. 
'  Good  luck  to  you  ;  be  off  to  your  tea  ! ' 

And  he  turned  away,  striding  swiftly  over  the  short  burnt 
August  grass  in  the  direction  of  the  Murewell  woods,  which 
rose  in  a  blue  haze  of  heat  against  the  slumberous  afternoon 
sky.  He  had  not  gone  a  hundred  yards  before  he  heard  a 
clattering  after  him.  He  stopped,  and  Ned  came  up  with  him. 

'  They're  heavy,  them  things,'  said  the  boy,  desperately  blurt- 
ing it  out,  and  pointing,  with  heaving  chest  and  panting  breath, 
to  the  rod  and  basket.  '  I  am  going  that  way,  I  can  leave  un  at 
the  rectory.' 

Robert's  eyes  gleamed. 


CHAP,  xxvii  CRISIS  351 

'  They  are  no  weight,  Ned — 'cause  why  ?  I've  been  lazy  and 
caught  no  fish !  But  there,' — after  a  moment's  hesitation  he 
slipped  off  the  basket  and  rod,  and  put  them  into  the  begrimed 
hands  held  out  for  them.  '  Bring  them  when  you  like  ;  I  don't 
know  when  I  shall  want  them  again.  Thank  you,  and  God 
bless  you ! ' 

The  boy  was  off  with  his  booty  in  a  second. 

'  Perhaps  he'll  like  to  think  he  did  it  for  me,  by  and  by,'  said 
Robert  sadly  to  himself,  moving  on,  a  little  moisture  in  the 
clear  gray  eye. 

About  three  o'clock  next  day  Robert  was  in  Oxford.  The 
night  before  he  had  telegraphed  to  ask  if  Grey  was  at  home. 
The  reply  had  been — '  Here  for  a  week  on  way  north ;  come  by 
all  means.'  Oh  !  that  look  of  Catherine's  when  he  had  told  her 
of  his  plan,  trying  in  vain  to  make  it  look  merely  casual  and 
ordinary. 

'  It  is  more  than  a  year  since  I  have  set  eyes  on  Grey,  Catherine. 
And  the  day's  change  would  be  a  boon.  I  could  stay  the  night 
at  Merton,  and  get  home  early  next  day.' 

But  as  he  turned  a  pleading  look  to  her,  he  had  been  startled 
by  the  sudden  rigidity  of  face  and  form.  Her  silence  had  in  it 
an  intense,  almost  a  haughty,  reproach,  which  she  was  too 
keenly  hurt  to  put  into  words. 

He  caught  her  by  the  arm,  and  drew  her  forcibly  to  him. 
There  he  made  her  look  into  the  eyes  which  were  full  of  nothing 
but  the  most  passionate  imploring  affection. 

'Have  patience  a  little  more,  Catherine  ! '  he  just  murmured. 
'  Oh,  how  I  have  blessed  you  for  silence !  Only  till  I  come 
back  ! ' 

'  Till  you  come  back,'  she  repeated  slowly.  '  I  cannot  bear  it 
any  longer,  Robert,  that  you  should  give  others  your  confidence, 
and  not  ine.' 

He  groaned  and  let  her  go.  No — there  should  be  but  one 
day  more  of  silence,  and  that  day  was  interposed  for  her  sake. 
If  Grey  from  his  calmer  standpoint  bade  him  wait  and  test 
himself,  before  taking  any  irrevocable  step,  he  would  obey  him. 
And  if  so,  the  worst  pang  of  all  need  not  yet  be  inflicted  on 
Catherine,  though  as  to  his  state  of  mind  he  would  be  perfectly 
open  with  her. 

A  few  hours  later  his  cab  deposited  him  at  the  well-known 
door.  It  seemed  to  him  that  he  and  the  scorched  plane-trees 
lining  the  sides  of  the  road  were  the  only  living  things  in  the 
wide  sun-beaten  street. 

Every  house  was  shut  up.  Only  the  Greys'  open  windows, 
amid  their  shuttered  neighbours,  had  a  friendly  human  air. 

Yes  •  Mr.  Grey  was  in,  and  expecting  Mr.  Elsmere.  Robert 
climbea  the  dim  familiar  staircase,  his  heart  beating  fast. 

'  Elsmere,  this  is  a  piece  of  good  fortune  ! ' 

And  the  two  men,  after  a  grasp  of  the  hand,  stood  front- 


352  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  iv 

ing  each  other :  Mr.  Grey,  a  light  of  pleasure  on  the  rugged 
dark-complexioned  face,  looking  up  at  his  taller  and  paler 
visitor. 

But  Robert  could  find  nothing  to  say  in  return ;  and  in  an 
instant  Mr.  Grey's  quick  eye  detected  the  strained  nervous 
emotion  of  the  man  before  him. 

'  Come  and  sit  down,  Elsmere — there,  in  the  window,  where 
we  can  talk.  One  has  to  live  on  this  east  side  of  the  house  this 
weather.' 

'  In  the  first  place,'  said  Mr.  Grey,  scrutinising  him,  as  he 
returned  to  his  own  book -littered  corner  of  the  window-seat. 
'  In  the  first  place,  my  dear  fellow,  I  can't  congratulate  you  on 
your  appearance.  I  never  saw  a  man  look  in  worse  condition 
— to  be  up  and  about.' 

'  That's  nothing  ! '  said  Robert  almost  impatiently.  '  I  want 
a  holiday,  I  believe.  Grey  ! '  and  he  looked  nervously  out  over 
garden  and  apple-trees,  'I  have  come — very  selfishly — to  ask 
your  advice ;  to  throw  a  trouble  upon  you,  to  claim  all  your 
friendship  can  give  me.' 

He  stopped.  Mr.  Grey  was  silent — his  expression  changing 
instantly,  the  bright  eyes  profoundly,  anxiously  attentive. 

'I  have  just  come  to  the  conclusion,'  said  Robert,  after  a 
moment,  with  quick  abruptness,  'that  I  ought  now — at  this 
moment— to  leave  the  Church,  and  give  up  my  living,  for  reasons 
which  I  will  describe  to  you.  But  before  I  act  on  the  conclu- 
sion, I  wanted  the  light  of  your  mind  upon  it,  seeing  that — that 
— other  persons  than  myself  are  concerned.' 

'  Give  up  your  living ! '  echoed  Mr.  Grey  in  a  low  voice  of 
astonishment.  He  sat  looking  at  the  face  and  figure  of  the  man 
before  him  with  a  half -frowning  expression.  How  often  Robert 
had  seen  some  rash  exuberant  youth  quelled  by  that  momentary 
frown  !  Essentially  conservative  as  was  the  inmost  nature  of 
the  man,  for  all  his  radicalism  there  were  few  tilings  for  which 
Henry  Grey  felt  more  instinctive  distaste  than  for  unsteadiness 
of  will  and  purpose,  however  glorified  by  fine  names.  Robert 
knew  it,  and,  strangely  enough,  felt  for  a  moment  in  the  presence 
of  the  heretical  tutor  as  a  culprit  before  a  judge. 

'  It  is,  of  course,  a  matter  of  opinions,'  he  said,  with  an  effort. 
'  Do  you  remember,  before  I  took  orders,  asking  whether  I  had 
ever  had  difficulties,  and  I  told  you  that  I  had  probably  never 
gone  deep  enough.  It  was  profoundly  true,  though  I  didn't 

really  mean  it.  But  this  year No,  no,  I  have  not  been 

merely  vain  and  hasty  !  I  may  be  a  shallow  creature,  but  it  has 
been  natural  growth,  not  wantonness.' 

And  at  last  his  eyes  met  Mr.  Grey's  firmly,  almost  with 
solemnity.  It  was  as  if  in  the  last  few  moments  he  had  been 
instinctively  testing  the  quality  of  his  own  conduct  and  motives 
by  the  touchstone  of  the  rare  personality  beside  him  ;  and  they 
had  stood  the  trial.  There  was  such  pain,  such  sincerity,  above 
all  such  freedom  from  littleness  of  soul  implied  in  words  and 


CHAP,  xxvn  CRISIS  353 

look,  that  Mr.  Grey  quickly  held  out  his  hand.  Robert  grasped 
it,  and  felt  that  the  way  was  clear  before  him. 

'  Will  you  give  me  an  account  of  it  ? '  said  Mr.  Grey,  and  his 
tone  was  grave  sympathy  itself.  '  Or  would  you  rather  confine 
yourself  to  generalities  and  accomplished  facts  ? ' 

'  I  will  try  and  give  you  an  account  of  it,'  said  Robert ;  and 
sitting  there  with  his  elbows  on  his  knees,  his  gaze  fixed  on  the 
yellowing  afternoon  sky,  and  the  intricacies  of  the  garden-walls 
between  them  and  the  new  Museum,  he  went  through  the 
history  of  the  last  two  years.  He  described  the  beginnings  of 
his  historical  work,  the  gradual  enlargement  of  the  mind's 
horizons,  and  the  intrusion  within  them  of  question  after 
question,  and  subject  after  subject.  Then  he  mentioned  the 
squire's  name. 

'  Ah !'  exclaimed  Mr.  Grey,  'I  had  forgotten  you  were  that 
man's  neighbour.  I  wonder  he  didn't  set  you  against  the  whole 
business,  inhuman  old  cynic  ! ' 

He  spoke  with  the  strong  dislike  of  the  idealist,  devoted  in 

Eractice  to  an  everyday  ministry  to  human  need,  for  the  intel- 
jctual  egotist.  Robert  caught  and  relished  the  old  pugnacious 
flash  in  the  eye,  the  Midland  strength  of  accent. 

'  Cynic  he  is,  not  altogether  inhuman,  I  think.  I  fought  him 
about  his  drains  and  his  cottages,  however,' — and  he  smiled 
sadly — '  before  I  began  to  read  his  books.  But  the  man's  genius 
is  incontestable,  his  learning  enormous.  He  found  me  in  a 
susceptible  state,  and  I  recognise  that  his  influence  immensely 
accelerated  a  process  already  begun.' 

Mr.  Grey  was  struck  with  the  simplicity  and  fulness  of  the 
avowal.  A  lesser  man  would  hardly  have  made  it  in  the  same 
way.  Rising  to  pace  up  and  down  the  room — the  familiar 
action  recalling  vividly  to  Robert  the  Sunday  afternoons  of 
bygone  years— he  began  to  put  questions  with  a  clearness  and 
decision  that  made  them  so  many  guides  to  the  man  answering, 
through  the  tangle  of  his  own  recollections. 

'  I  see,'  said  the  tutor  at  last,  his  hands  in  the  pockets  of  his 
short  gray  coat,  his  brow  bent  and  thoughtful.  'Well,  the  pro- 
cess in  you  has  been  the  typical  process  of  the  present  day. 
Abstract  thought  has  had  little  or  nothing  to  say  to  it.  It  has 
been  all  a  question  of  literary  and  historical  evidence.  /  am 
old-fashioned  enough ' — and  he  smiled — '  to  stick  to  the  a  priori 
impossibility  of  miracles,  but  then  I  am  a  philosopher !  You 
have  come  to  see  how  miracle  is  manufactured,  to  recognise  in 
it  merely  a  natural  inevitable  outgrowth  of  human  testimony, 
in  its  pre-scientific  stages.  It  has  been  all  experimental,  induc- 
tive. I  imagine ' — he  looked  up — '  you  didn't  get  much  help  out 
of  the  orthodox  apologists  ? ' 

Robert  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

'  It  often  seemed  to  me,'  he  said  drearily,  '  I  might  have  got 
through,  but  for  the  men  whose  books  I  used  to  read  and 
respect  most  in  old  days.  The  point  of  view  is  generally  so 


354  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  iv 

extraordinarily  limited.  Westcott,  for  instance,  who  means  so 
much  nowadays  to  the  English  religious  world,  first  isolates 
Christianity  from  all  the  other  religious  phenomena  of  the 
world,  and  then  argues  upon  its  details.  You  might  as  well 
isolate  English  jurisprudence,  and  discuss  its  details  without 
any  reference  to  Teutonic  custom  or  Roman  law !  You  may 
be  as  logical  or  as  learned  as  you  like  within  the  limits  chosen, 
but  the  whole  result  is  false  !  You  treat  Christian  witness  and 
Biblical  literature  as  you  would  treat  no  other  witness,  and  no 
other  literature  in  the  world.  And  you  cannot  show  cause 
enough.  For  your  reasons  depend  on  the  very  witness  under 
dispute.  And  so  you  go  on  arguing  in  a  circle,  ad  infinitum.' 

But  his  voice  dropped.  The  momentary  eagerness  died  away 
as  quickly  as  it  had  risen,  leaving  nothing  but  depression  be- 
hind it. 

Mr.  Grey  meditated.  At  last  he  said,  with  a  delicate  change 
of  tone, — 

'And  now — if  I  may  ask  it,  Elsmere — how  far  has  this  de- 
structive process  gone  ? ' 

'I  can't  tell  you,'  said  Robert,  turning  away  almost  with  a 
groan  ;  '  I  only  know  that  the  things  I  loved  once  I  love  still, 
and  that — that — if  I  had  the  heart  to  think  at  all,  I  should  see 
more  of  God  in  the  world  than  I  ever  saw  before  ! ' 

The  tutor's  eye  flashed.  Robert  had  gone  back  to  the  window, 
and  was  miserably  looking  out.  After  all,  he  had  told  only  half 
his  story. 

'And  so  you  feel  you  must  give  up  your  living  ? ' 

'  What  else  is  there  for  me  to  do  ?  cried  Robert,  turning  upon 
him,  startled  by  the  slow  deliberate  tone. 

'Well,  of  course,  you  know  that  there  are  many  men,  men 
with  whom  both  you  and  I  are  acquainted,  who  hold  very  much 
what  I  imagine  your  opinions  now  are,  or  will  settle  into,  who 
are  still  in  the  Church  of  England,  doing  admirable  work  there ! ' 

'  I  know,'  said  Elsmere  quickly — '  I  know ;  I  cannot  conceive 
it,  nor  could  you.  Imagine  standing  up  Sunday  after  Sunday 
to  say  the  things  you  do  not  believe, — using  words  as  a  conven- 
tion which  those  who  hear  you  receive  as  literal  truth, — and 
trusting  the  maintenance  of  your  position  either  to  your  neigh- 
bour's forbearance  or  to  your  own  powers  of  evasion  !  With  the 
ideas  at  present  in  my  head,  nothing  would  induce  me  to  preach 
another  Easter  Day  sermon  to  a  congregation  that  have  both  a 
moral  and  a  legal  right  to  demand  from  me  an  implicit  belief  in 
the  material  miracle  ! ' 

'  Yes,'  said  the  other  gravely — '  yes,  I  believe  you  are  right. 
It  can't  be  said  the  Broad  Church  movement  has  helped  us 
much  !  How  greatly  it  promised  ! — how  little  it  has  performed ! 
For  the  private  person,  the  worshipper,  it  is  different — or  I 
think  so.  No  man  pries  into  our  prayers  ;  and  to  cut  ourselves 
off  from  common  worship  is  to  lose  that  fellowship  which  is  in 
itself  a  witness  and  vehicle  of  God.' 


CHAP,  xxvn  CRISIS  355 

But  his  tone  had  grown  hesitating,  and  touched  with  melan- 
choly. 

There  was  a  moment's  silence.  Then  Robert  walked  up  to 
him  again. 

'At  the  same  time,'  he  said  falteringly,  standing  before  the 
elder  man,  as  he  might  have  stood  as  an  undergraduate,  '  let  me 
not  be  rash  !  If  you  think  this  change  has  been  too  rapid  to 
last — if  you,  knowing  me  better  than  at  this  moment  I  can  know 
myself — if  you  bid  me  wait  a  while,  before  I  take  any  overt  step, 

I  will  wait — oh,  God  knows  I  will  wait ! — my  wife '  and  his 

husky  voice  failed  him  utterly. 

'  Y  our  wife  ! '  cried  Mr.  Grey,  startled.  '  Mrs.  Elsmere  does 
not  know  ? ' 

'My  wife  knows  nothing,  or  almost  nothing — and  it  will 
break  her  heart ! ' 

He  moved  hastily  away  again,  and  stood  with  his  back  to  his 
friend,  his  tall  narrow  form  outlined  against  the  window.  Mr. 
Grey  was  left  in  dismay,  rapidly  turning  over  the  impressions 
of  Catherine  left  on  him  by  his  last  year's  sight  of  her.  That 
pale  distinguished  woman  with  her  look  of  strength  and  char- 
acter,— he  remembered  Langham's  analysis  of  her,  and  of  the 
silent  religious  intensity  she  had  brought  with  her  from  her 
training  among  the  northern  hills. 

Was  there  a  bitterly  human  tragedy  preparing  under  all  this 
thought-drama  he  had  been  listening  to  ? 

Deeply  moved,  he  went  up  to  Robert,  and  laid  his  rugged 
hand  almost  timidly  upon  him. 

'  Elsmere,  it  won't  break  her  heart !  You  are  a  good  man. 
She  is  a  good  woman.'  What  an  infinity  of  meaning  there  was 
in  the  simple  words !  '  Take  courage.  Tell  her  at  once — tell 
her  everything — and  let  her  decide  whether  there  shall  be  any 
waiting.  I  cannot  help  you  there  ;  she  can  ;  she  will  probably 
understand  you  better  than  you  understand  yourself.' 

He  tightened  his  grasp,  and  gently  pushed  his  guest  into  a 
chair  beside  him.  Robert  was  deadly  pale,  his  face  quivering 
painfully.  The  long  physical  strain  of  the  past  months  had 
weakened  for  the  moment  all  the  controlling  forces  of  the  will. 
Mr.  Grey  stood  over  him — the  whole  man  dilating,  expanding, 
under  a  tyrannous  stress  of  feeling. 

'It  is  hard,  it  is  bitter,'  he  said  slowly,  with  a  wonderful 
manly  tenderness.  '  I  know  it,  I  have  gone  through  it.  So  has 
many  and  many  a  poor  soul  that  you  and  I  have  known  !  But 
there  need  be  no  sting  in  the  wound  unless  we  ourselves 
envenom  it.  I  know — oh  !  I  know  very  well — the  man  of  the 
world  scoffs,  but  to  him  who  has  once  been  a  Christian  of  the 
old  sort,  the  parting  with  the  Christian  mythology  is  the 
rending  asunder  of  bones  and  marrow.  It  means  parting  with 
half  the  confidence,  half  the  joy,  of  life  !  But  take  heart,'  and 
the  tone  grew  still  more  solemn,  still  more  penetrating.  '  It  is 
the  education  of  God  !  Do  not  imagine  it  will  put  you  farther 


356  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  iv 

from  Him  !  He  is  in  criticism,  in  science,  in  doubt,  so  long  as 
the  doubt  is  a  pure  and  honest  doubt,  as  yours  is.  He  is  in  all 
life,  in  all  thought.  The  thought  of  man,  as  it  has  shaped 
itself  in  institutions,  in  philosophies,  in  science,  in  patient 
critical  work,  or  in  the  life  of  charity,  is  the  one  continuous 
revelation  of  God  !  Look  for  Him  in  it  all ;  see  how,  little  by 
little,  the  Divine  indwelling  force,  using  as  its  tools  —  but 
merely  as  its  tools !  —  man's  physical  appetites  and  condi- 
tions, has  built  up  conscience  and  the  moral  life  ;  think  how 
every  faculty  of  the  mind  has  been  trained  in  turn  to  take  its 
part  in  the  great  work  of  faith  upon  the  visible  world  !  Love 
and  imagination  built  up  religion,  —  shall  reason  destroy  it  1 
No  ! — reason  is  God's  like  the  rest !  Trust  it, — trust  him.  The 
leading  strings  of  the  past  are  dropping  from  you ;  they  are 
dropping  from  the  world,  not  wantonly,  or  by  chance,  but  in 
the  providence  of  God.  Learn  the  lesson  of  your  own  pain, — 
learn  to  seek  God,  not  in  any  single  event  of  past  history,  but  in 
your  own  soul, — in  the  constant  verifications  of  experience,  in 
the  life  of  Christian  love.  Spiritually  you  have  gone  through 
the  last  wrench,  I  promise  it  you !  You  being  what  you  are, 
nothing  can  cut  this  ground  from  under  your  feet.  Whatever 
may  have  been  the  forms  of  human  belief,  faith,  the  faith 
which  saves,  has  always  been  rooted  here  !  All  things  change, 
—  creeds  and  philosophies  and  outward  systems,  —  but  God 
remains ! 

' "  Life,  that  in  me  has  rest, 

As  I,  undying  Life,  have  power  in  Thee  ! " ' 

The  lines  dropped  with  low  vibrating  force  from  lips  unaccus- 
tomed indeed  to  such  an  outburst.  The  speaker  stood  a 
moment  longer  in  silence  beside  the  figure  in  the  chair,  and  it 
seemed  to  Robert,  gazing  at  him  with  fixed  eyes,  that  the  man's 
whole  presence,  at  once  so  homely  and  so  majestic,  was  charged 
with  benediction.  It  was  as  though  invisible  hands  of  healing 
and  consecration  had  been  laid  upon  him.  The  fiery  soul 
beside  him  had  kindled  anew  the  drooping  life  of  his  own. 
So  the  torch  of  God  passes  on  its  way,  hand  reaching  out  to 
hand. 

He  bent  forwai-d,  stammering  incoherent  words  of  assent  and 
gratitude,  he  knew  not  what.  Mr.  Grey,  who  had  sunk  into  his 
chair,  gave  him  time  to  recover  himself.  The  intensity  of  the 
tutor's  own  mood  relaxed ;  and  presently  he  began  to  talk  to 
his  guest,  in  a  wholly  different  tone,  of  the  practical  detail  of  the 
step  before  him,  supposing  it  to  be  taken  immediately,  discussing 
the  probable  attitude  of  Robert's  bishop,  the  least  conspicuous 
mode  of  withdrawing  from  the  living,  and  so  on  —  all  with 
gentleness  and  sympathy  indeed,  but  with  an  indefinable  change 
of  manner,  which  showed  that  he  felt  it  well  both  for  himself 
and  Elsmere  to  repress  any  further  expression  of  emotion. 
There  was  something,  a  vein  of  stoicism  perhaps,  in  Mr.  Grey's 


CHAP,  xxvin  CRISIS  357 

temper  of  mind,  which,  while  it  gave  a  special  force  and  sacred- 
ness  to  his  rare  moments  of  fervent  speech,  was  wont  in 
general  to  make  men  more  self-controlled  than  usual  in  his 
presence.  Robert  felt  now  the  bracing  force  of  it. 

'  Will  you  stay  with  us  to  dinner  ? '  Mr.  Grey  asked  when 
at  last  Elsmere  got  up  to  go.  'There  are  one  or  two  lone 
Fellows  coming  —  asked  before  your  telegram  came,  of  course. 
Do  exactly  as  you  like.' 

'  I  think  not,'  said  Robert,  after  a  pause.  '  I  longed  to  see 
you,  but  I  am  not  fit  for  general  society.' 

Mr.  Grey  did  not  press  him.  He  rose  and  went  with  his 
visitor  to  the  door. 

'  Good-bye,  good-bye  !  Let  me  always  know  what  I  can  do 
for  you.  And  your  wife — poor  thing,  poor  thing  !  Go  and  tell 
her,  Elsmere  ;  don't  lose  a  moment  you  can  help.  God  help  her 
and  you ! ' 

They  grasped  each  other's  hands.  Mr.  Grey  followed  him 
down  the  stairs  and  along  the  narrow  hall.  He  opened  the 
hall  door,  and  smiled  a  last  smile  of  encouragement  and 
sympathy  into  the  eyes  that  expressed  such  a  young  moved 
gratitude.  The  door  closed.  Little  did  Elsmere  realise 
that  never,  in  this  life,  would  he  see  that  smile  or  hear  that 
voice  again ! 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

IN  half  an  hour  from  the  time  Mr.  Grey's  door  closed  upon  him, 
Elsmere  had  caught  a  convenient  cross-country  train,  and  had 
left  the  Oxford  towers  and  spires,  the  shrunken  summer  Isis, 
and  the  flat  hot  river  meadows  far  behind  him.  He  had  meant 
to  stay  at  Merton,  as  we  know,  for  the  night.  Now,  his  one 
thought  was  to  get  back  to  Catherine.  The  urgency  of  Mr. 
Grey  s  words  was  upon  him,  and  love  had  a  miserable  pang 
that  it  should  have  needed  to  be  ui'ged. 

By  eight  o'clock  he  was  again  at  Churton.  There  were  no 
carriages  waiting  at  the  little  station,  but  the  thought  of  the 
walk  across  the  darkening  common  through  the  August  moon- 
rise  had  been  a  refreshment  to  him  in  the  heat  and  crowd  of 
the  train.  He  hurried  through  the  small  town,  where  the 
streets  were  full  of  summer  idlers,  and  the  lamps  were  twink- 
ling in  the  still  balmy  air,  along  a  dusty  stretch  of  road,  leaving 
man  and  his  dwellings  farther  and  farther  to  the  rear  of  him. 
till  at  last  he  emerged  on  a  boundless  tract  of  common,  and 
struck  to  the  right  into  a  cart-track  leading  to  Murewell. 

He  was  on  the  top  of  a  high  sandy  ridge,  looking  west  and 
north,  over  a  wide  evening  world  of  heather  and  wood  and 
hill.  To  the  right,  far  ahead,  across  the  misty  lower  grounds 
into  which  he  was  soon  to  plunge,  rose  the  woods  of  Murewell, 


358  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  iv 

black  and  massive  in  the  twilight  distance.  To  the  left,  but  on 
a  nearer  plane,  the  undulating  common  stretching  downwards 
from  where  he  stood  rose  suddenly  towards  a  height  crowned 
with  a  group  of  gaunt  and  jagged  firs — landmarks  for  all  the 
plain — of  which  every  ghostly  bough  and  crest  was  now  sharply 
outlined  against  a  luminous  sky.  For  the  wide  heaven  in  front 
of  him  was  still  delicately  glowing  in  all  its  under  parts  with 
soft  harmonies  of  dusky  red  or  blue,  while  in  its  higher  zone 
the  same  tract  of  sky  was  closely  covered  with  the  finest  net- 
work of  pearl-white  cloud,  suffused  at  the  moment  with  a  silver 
radiance  so  intense  that  a  spectator  might  almost  have  dreamed 
the  moon  had  forgotten  its  familiar  place  of  rising,  and  was 
about  to  mount  into  a  startled  expectant  west.  Not  a  light  in 
all  the  wide  expanse,  and  for  a  while  not  a  sound  of  human 
life,  save  the  beat  of  Robert's  step,  or  the  occasional  tap  of  his 
stick  against  the  pebbles  of  the  road. 

Presently  he  reached  the  edge  of  the  ridge  whence  the  rough 
track  he  was  following  sank  sharply  to  the  lower  levels.  Here 
was  a  marvellous  point  of  view,  and  the  rector  stood  a  moment, 
beside  a  bare  weather-blasted  fir,  a  ghostly  shadow  thrown 
behind  him.  All  around  the  gorse  and  heather  seemed  still 
radiating  light,  as  though  the  air  had  been  so  drenched  in 
sunshine  that  even  long  after  the  sun  had  vanished  the  invading 
darkness  found  itself  still  unable  to  win  firm  possession  of  earth 
and  sky.  Every  little  stone  in  the  sandy  road  was  still  weirdly 
visible ;  the  colour  of  the  heather,  now  in  lavish  bloom,  could  be 
felt  though  hardly  seen. 

Before  him  melted  line  after  line  of  woodland,  broken  by 
hollow  after  hollow,  filled  with  vaporous  wreaths  of  mist. 
About  him  were  the  sounds  of  a  wild  nature.  The  air  was 
resonant  with  the  purring  of  the  night -jars,  and  every  now 
and  then  he  caught  the  loud  clap  of  their  wings  as  they  swayed 
unsteadily  through  the  furze  and  bracken.  Overhead  a  trio  of 
wild  ducks  flew  across,  from  pond  to  pond,  their  hoarse  cry 
descending  through  the  darkness.  The  partridges  on  the  hill 
called  to  each  other,  and  certain  sharp  sounds  betrayed  to  the 
solitary  listener  the  presence  of  a  flock  of  swans  on  a  neigh- 
bouring pool. 

The  rector  felt  himself  alone  on  a  wide  earth.  It  was  almost 
with  a  start  of  pleasure  that  he  caught  at  last  the  barking  of 
dogs  on  a  few  distant  farms,  or  the  dim  thunderous  rush  of  a 
train  through  the  wide  wooded  landscape  beyond  the  heath. 
Behind  that  frowning  mass  of  wood  lay  the  rectory.  The  lights 
must  be  lit  in  the  little  drawing-room ;  Catherine  must  be 
sitting  by  the  lamp,  her  fine  head  bent  over  book  or  work, 
grieving  for  him  perhaps,  her  anxious  expectant  heart  going  out 
to  him  through  the  dark.  He  thinks  of  the  village  lying 
wrapped  in  the  peace  of  the  August  night,  the  lamp  rays  from 
shop-front  or  casement  streaming  out  on  to  the  green;  he 
thinks  of  his  child,  of  his  dead  mother,  feeling  heavy  and 


CHAP,  xxvin  CRISIS  359 

bitter  within  him  all  the  time  the  message  of  separation  and 
exile. 

But  his  mood  was  no  longer  one  of  mere  dread,  of  helpless 
pain,  of  miserable  self -scorn.  Contact  with  Henry  Grey  had 
brought  him  that  rekindling  of  the  flame  of  conscience,  that 
medicinal  stirring  of  the  soul's  waters,  which  is  the  most 
precious  boon  that  man  can  give  to  man.  In  that  sense  which 
attaches  to  every  successive  resurrection  of  our  best  life  from 
the  shades  of  despair  or  selfishness,  he  had  that  day,  almost  that 
hour,  been  born  again.  He  was  no  longer  filled  mainly  with  the 
sense  of  personal  failure,  with  scorn  for  his  own  blundering 
impetuous  temper^  so  lacking  in  prescience  and  in  balance  ;  or, 
in  respect  to  his  wife,  with  such  an  anguished  impotent  remorse. 
He  was  nerved  and  braced:  whatever  oscillations  the  mind 
might  go  through  in  its  search  for  another  equilibrium,  to-night 
there  was  a  moment  of  calm.  The  earth  to  him  was  once  more 
full  of  God,  existence  full  of  value. 

'  The  things  I  have  always  loved,  I  love  still ! '  he  had  said  to 
Mr.  Grey.  And  in  this  healing  darkness  it  was  as  if  the  old 
loves,  the  old  familiar  images  of  thought,  returned  to  him  new- 
clad,  re-entering  the  desolate  heart  in  a  white- winged  procession 
of  consolation.  On  the  heath  beside  him  the  Christ  stood  once 
more,  and  as  the  disciple  felt  the  sacred  presence  he  could  bear 
for  the  first  time  to  let  the  chafing  pent-up  current  of  love  flow 
into  the  new  channels,  so  painfully  prepared  for  it  by  the  toil 
of  thought.  '  EitJier  God  or  an  impostor.  What  scorn  the  heart, 
the  intellect,  threw  on  the  alternative !  Not  in  the  dress  of 
speculations  which  represent  the  product  of  long  past,  long 
superseded  looms  of  human  thought,  but  in  the  guise  of  common 
manhood,  laden  like  his  fellows  with  the  pathetic  weight  of 
human  weakness  and  human  ignorance,  the  Master  moves 
towards  him — 

'  Like  you,  my  son,  I  struggled  and  I  prayed.  Like  you,  I  had 
my  days  of  doubt  and  nights  of  wrestling.  I  had  my  dreams,  my 
delusions,  with  my  fellows.  I  was  weak;  I  suffered;  I  died. 
But  God  was  in  me,  and  the  courage,  the  patience,  the  love  He  gave 
to  me,  the  scenes  of  the  poor  human  hfe  He  inspired,  have  be- 
come by  His  will  the  world's  eternal  lesson — man's  primer  of 
Divine  things,  hung  high  in  the  eyes  of  all,  simple  and  wise,  that 
all  may  see  and  all  may  learn.  Take  it  to  your  Jieart  again — that 
life,  that  pain,  of  mine  !  Use  it  to  new  ends  ;  apprehend  it  in  new 
ways  ;  but  knowledge  shall  not  take  it  from  you  ;  and  love,  instead 
of  weakening  or  forgetting,  if  it  be  but  faithful,  shall  find  ever  fresh 
power  of  realising  and  renewing  itself.' 

So  said  the  vision  ;  and  carrying  the  passion  of  it  deep  in  his 
heart  the  rector  went  his  way,  down  the  long  stony  hill,  past 
the  solitary  farm  amid  the  trees  at  the  foot  of  it,  across  the 
grassy  common  beyond,  with  its  sentinel  clumps  of  beeches, 
past  an  ethereal  string  of  tiny  lakes  just  touched  by  the  moon- 
rise,  beside  some  of  the  first  cottages  of  Murewell,  up  the  hill, 


360  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  iv 

with  pulse  beating  and  step  quickening,  and  round  into  the 
stretch  of  road  leading  to  his  own  gate. 

As  soon  as  he  had  passed  the  screen  made  by  the  shrubs  on 
the  lawn,  he  saw  it  all  as  he  had  seen  it  in  his  waking  dream  on 
the  common — the  lamplight,  the  open  windows,  the  white 
muslin  curtains  swaying  a  little  in  the  soft  evening  air,  and 
Catherine's  figure  seen  dimly  through  them. 

The  noise  of  the  gate,  however — of  the  steps  on  the  drive — 
had  startled  her.  He  saw  her  rise  quickly  from  her  low  chair, 
put  some  work  down  beside  her,  and  move  in  haste  to  the 
window. 

'  Robert ! '  she  cried  in  amazement. 

'Yes,'  he  answered,  still  some  yards  from  her,  his  voice 
coming  strangely  to  her  out  of  the  moonlit  darkness.  'I 
did  my  errand  early ;  I  found  I  could  get  back  ;  and  here 
I  am.' 

She  flew  to  the  door,  opened  it,  and  felt  herself  caught  in  his 
arms. 

'  Robert,  you  are  quite  damp ! '  she  said,  fluttering  and 
shrinking,  for  all  her  sweet  habitual  gravity  of  manner — 
was  it  the  passion  of  that  yearning  embrace?  'Have  you 
walked?' 

'Yes.  It  is  the  dew  on  the  common,  I  suppose.  The  grass 
was  drenched.' 

'  Will  you  have  some  food  ?  They  can  bring  back  the  supper 
directly.' 

'I  don't  want  any  food  now,'  he  said,  hanging  up  his  hat. 
'I  got  some  lunch  in  town,  and  a  cup  of  soup  at  Reading 
coming  back.  Perhaps  you  will  give  me  some  tea  soon — not 
yet.' 

He  came  up  to  her,  pushing  back  the  thick  disordered  locks 
of  hair  from  his  eyes  with  one  hand,  the  other  held  out  to  her. 
As  he  came  under  the  light  of  the  hall  lamp  she  was  so  startled 
by  the  gray  pallor  of  the  face  that  she  caught  hold  of  his  out- 
stretched hand  with  both  hers.  What  she  said  he  never  knew 
— her  look  was  enough.  He  put  his  arm  round  her,  and  as  he 
opened  the  drawing-room  door  holding  her  pressed  against  him, 
she  felt  the  desperate  agitation  in  him  penetrating,  beating 
against  an  almost  iron  self-control  of  manner.  He  shut  the 
door  behind  them. 

'  Robert,  dear  Robert ! '  she  said,  clinging  to  him,  '  there  is 
bad  news, — tell  me — there  is  something  to  tell  me !  Oh  !  what  is 
it — what  is  it  ? ' 

It  was  almost  like  a  child's  wail.  His  brow  contracted  still 
more  painfully. 

'  My  darling,'  he  said  ;  '  my  darling — my  dear  dear  wife  ! ' 
and  he  bent  his  head  down  to  her  as  she  lay  against  his  breast, 
kissing  her  hair  with  a  passion  of  pity,  of  remorse,  of  tender- 
ness, which  seemed  to  rend  his  whole  nature. 

'  Tell  me— tell  me— Robert ! ' 


CHAP,  xxvrii  CRISIS  361 

He  guided  her  gently  across  the  room,  past  the  sofa  over 
which  her  work  lay  scattered,  past  the  flower-table,  now  a 
many-coloured  mass  of  roses,  which  was  her  especial  pride,  past 
the  remains  of  a  brick  castle  which  had  delighted  Mary's  won- 
dering eyes  and  mischievous  fingers  an  hour  or  two  before,  to  a 
low  chair  by  the  open  window  looking  on  the  wide  moonlit 
expanse  of  cornfield.  He  put  her  into  it,  walked  to  the  window 
on  the  other  side  of  the  room,  shut  it,  and  drew  down  the  blind. 
Then  he  went  back  to  her,  and  sank  down  beside  her,  kneeling, 
her  hands  in  his. 

'  My  dear  wife — you  have  loved  me — you  do  love  me  ? ' 

She  could  not  answer,  she  could  only  press  his  hands  with 
her  cold  fingers,  with  a  look  and  gesture  that  implored  him  to 
speak. 

'  Catherine,'  he  said,  still  kneeling  before  her,  '  you  remem- 
ber that  night  you  came  down  to  me  in  the  study,  the  night  I 
told  you  I  was  in  trouble  and  you  could  not  help  me.  Did  you 
guess  from  what  I  said  what  the  trouble  was  ? ' 

'  Yes,'  she  answered,  trembling, '  yes,  I  did,  Robert ;  I  thought 
you  were  depressed — troubled — about  religion.' 

'  And  I  know,'  he  said  with  an  outburst  of  feeling,  kissing 
her  hands  as  they  lay  in  his — '  I  know  very  well  that  you  went 
upstairs  and  prayed  for  me,  my  white -sou  led  angel !  But 
Catherine,  the  trouble  grew — it  got  blacker  and  blacker.  You 
were  there  beside  me,  and  you  could  not  help  me.  I  dared  not 
tell  you  about  it ;  I  could  only  struggle  on  alone,  so  terribly 
alone,  sometimes ;  and  now  I  am  beaten,  beaten.  And  I  come 
to  you  to  ask  you  to  help  me  in  the  only  thing  that  remains  to 
me.  Help  me,  Catherine,  to  be  an  honest  man — to  follow  con- 
science— to  say  and  do  the  truth  ! ' 

'  Robert,'  she  said  piteously,  deadly  pale,  '  I  don't  under- 
stand.' 

'  Oh,  my  poor  darling ! '  he  cried,  with  a  kind  of  moan  of 
pity  and  misery.  Then  still  holding  her,  he  said,  with  strong 
deliberate  emphasis,  looking  into  the  gray-blue  eyes — the 
quivering  face  so  full  of  austerity  and  delicacy, — 

'  For  six  or  seven  months,  Catherine — really  for  much  longer, 
though  I  never  knew  it — I  have  been  fighting  with  doubt — 
doubt  of  orthodox  Christianity— doubt  of  what  the  Church 
teaches — of  what  I  have  to  say  and  preach  every  Sunday.  First 
it  crept  on  me  I  knew  not  how.  Then  the  weight  grew  heavier, 
and  I  began  to  struggle  with  it.  I  felt  I  must  struggle  with  it. 
Many  men,  I  suppose,  in  my  position  would  have  trampled  on 
their  doubts — would  have  regarded  them  as  sin  in  themselves, 
would  have  felt  it  their  duty  to  ignore  them  as  much  as  pos- 
sible, trusting  to  time  and  God's  help.  I  could  not  ignore  them. 
The  thought  of  questioning  the  most  sacred  beliefs  that  you 
and  I ' —  and  his  voice  faltered  a  moment — '  held  in  common  was 
misery  to  me.  On  the  other  hand,  I  knew  myself.  I  knew  that 
I  could  no  more  go  on  living  to  any  purpose,  with  a  whole 


362  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  iv 

region  of  the  mind  shut  up,  as  it  were,  barred  away  from  the 
rest  of  me,  than  I  could  go  on  living  with  a  secret  between 
myself  and  you.  I  could  not  hold  my  faith  by  a  mere  tenure  of 
tyranny  and  fear.  Faith  that  is  not  free — that  is  not  the  faith 
of  the  whole  creature,  body,  soul,  and  intellect — seemed  to  me  a 
faith  worthless  both  to  God  and  man  ! ' 

Catherine  looked  at  him  stupefied.  The  world  seemed  to  be 
turning  round  her.  Infinitely  more  terrible  than  his  actual 
words  was  the  accent  running  through  words  and  tone  and 
gesture — the  accent  of  irreparableness,  as  of  something  dismally 
done  and  finished.  What  did  it  all  mean  ?  For  what  had  he 
brought  her  there  ?  She  sat  stunned,  realising  with  awful  force 
the  feebleness,  the  inadequacy,  of  her  own  fears. 

He,  meanwhile,  had  paused  a  moment,  meeting  her  gaze  with 
those  yearning  sunken  eyes.  Then  he  went  on,  his  voice 
changing  a  little, — 

'  But  if  I  had  wished  it  ever  so  much,  I  could  not  have  helped 
myself.  The  process,  so  to  speak,  had  gone  too  far  by  the  time 
I  knew  where  I  was.  I  think  the  change  must  have  begun 
before  the  Mile  End  time.  Looking  back,  I  see  the  foundations 
were  laid  in — in — the  work  of  last  winter.' 

She  shivered.  He  stooped  and  kissed  her  hands  again 
passionately.  '  Am  I  poisoning  even  the  memory  of  our  past 
for  you?'  he  cried.  Then,  restraining  himself  at  once,  he 
hurried  on  again  :  '  After  Mile  End  you  remember  I  began  to 
see  much  of  the  squire.  Oh,  my  wife,  don't  look  at  me  so  !  It 
was  not  his  doing  in  any  true  sense.  I  am  not  such  a  weak 
shuttlecock  as  that !  But  being  where  I  was  before  our  inti- 
macy began,  his  influence  hastened  everything.  I  don't  wish  to 
minimise  it.  I  was  not  made  to  stand  alone  ! ' 

And  again  that  bitter,  perplexed,  half-scornful  sense  of  his 
own  pliancy  at  the  hands  of  circumstance  as  compared  with  the 
rigidity  of  other  men  descended  upon  him.  Catherine  made  a 
faint  movement  as  though  to  draw  her  hands  away. 

'  Was  it  well,'  she  said,  in  a  voice  which  sounded  like  a  harsh 
echo  of  her  own,  '  was  it  right  for  a  clergyman  to  discuss  sacred 
things — with  such  a  man? 

He  let  her  hands  go,  guided  for  the  moment  by  a  delicate 
imperious  instinct  which  bade  him  appeal  to  something  else 
than  love.  Rising,  he  sat  down  opposite  to  her  on  the  low 
window  seat,  while  she  sank  back  into  her  chair,  her  fingers 
clinging  to  the  arm  of  it,  the  lamplight  far  behind  deepening 
all  the  shadows  of  the  face,  the  hollows  in  the  cheeks,  the  line 
of  experience  and  will  about  the  mouth.  The  stupor  in  which 
she  had  just  listened  to  him  was  beginning  to  break  up.  Wild 
forces  of  condemnation  and  resistance  were  rising  in  her  ;  and 
he  knew  it.  He  knew,  too,  that  as  yet  she  only  half  realised 
the  situation,  and  that  blow  after  blow  still  remained  to  him 
to  deal. 

'Was  it  right  that  I  should  discuss  religious  matters  with 


CHAP,  xxvin  CRISIS  363 

the  squire  ? '  he  repeated,  his  face  resting  on  his  hands.  '  What 
are  religious  matters,  Catherine,  and  what  are  not  ? ' 

Then,  still  controlling  himself  rigidly,  his  eyes  fixed  on  the 
shadowy  face  of  his  wife,  his  ear  catching  her  quick  uneven 
breath,  he  went  once  more  through  the  dismal  history  of  the 
last  few  months,  dwelling  on  his  state  of  thought  before  the 
intimacy  with  Mr.  Wendover  began,  on  his  first  attempts  to 
escape  the  squire's  influence,  on  his  gradual  pitiful  surrender. 
Then  he  told  the  story  of  the  last  memorable  walk  before  the 
squire's  journey,  of  the  moment  in  the  study  afterwards,  and  of 
the  months  of  feverish  reading  and  wrestling  which  had  fol- 
lowed. Half-way  through  it  a  new  despair  seized  him.  What 
was  the  good  or  all  he  was  saying  ?  He  was  speaking  a  lan- 
guage she  did  not  really  understand.  What  were  all  these 
critical  and  literary  considerations  to  her  ? 

The  rigidity  of  her  silence  showed  him  that  her  sympathy 
was  not  with  him,  that  in  comparison  with  the  vibrating  pro- 
test of  her  own  passionate  faith  which  must  be  now  ringing 
through  her,  whatever  he  could  urge  must  seem  to  her  the 
merest  culpable  trifling  with  the  soul's  awful  destinies.  In  an 
instant  of  tumultuous  speech  he  could  not  convey  to  her  the 
temper  and  results  of  his  own  complex  training,  and  on  that 
training,  as  he  very  well  knew,  depended  the  piercing,  convinc- 
ing force  of  all  that  he  was  saying.  There  were  gulfs  between 
them — gulfs  which;  as  it  seemed  to  him,  in  a  miserable  insight, 
could  never  be  bridged  again.  Oh,  the  frightful  separateness 
of  experience ! 

Still  he  struggled  on.  He  brought  the  story  down  to  the 
conversation  at  the  Hall,  described — in  broken  words  of  fire 
and  pain — the  moment  of  spiritual  wreck  which  had  come  upon 
him  in  the  August  lane,  his  night  of  struggle,  his  resolve  to  go 
to  Mr.  Grey.  And  all  through  he  was  not  so  much  narrating  as 
pleading  a  cause,  and  that  not  his  own,  but  Love's.  Love  was 
at  the  bar,  and  it  was  for  love  that  the  eloquent  voice,  the  pale 
varying  face,  were  really  pleading,  through  all  the  long  story  of 
intellectual  change. 

At  the  mention  of  Mr.  Grey  Catherine  grew  restless ;  she 
sat  up  suddenly,  with  a  cry  of  bitterness. 

'  Robert,  why  did  you  go  away  from  me  ?  It  was  cruel.  I 
should  have  known  first.  He  had  no  right — no  right ! ' 

She  clasped  her  hands  round  her  knees,  her  beautiful  mouth 
set  and  stern.  The  moon  had  been  sailing  westward  all  this 
time,  and  as  Catherine  bent  forward  the  yellow  light  caught 
her  face,  and  brought  out  the  haggard  change  in  it.  He  held 
out  his  hands  to  her  with  a  low  groan,  helpless  against  her  re- 
proach, her  jealousy.  He  dared  not  speak  of  what  Mr.  Grey 
had  done  for  him,  of  the  tenderness  of  his  counsel  towards  her 
specially.  He  felt  that  everything  he  could  say  would  but  tor- 
ture the  wounded  heart  still  more. 

But  she  did  not  notice  the  outstretched  hands.     She  covered 


364  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  iv 

her  face  in  silence  a  moment,  as  though  trying  to  see  her  way 
more  clearly  through  the  mazes  of  disaster ;  and  he  waited.  At 
last  she  looked  up. 

'  I  cannot  follow  all  you  have  been  saying,'  she  said,  almost 
harshly.  'I  know  so  little  of  books,  I  cannot  give  them  the 
place  you  do.  You  say  you  have  convinced  yourself  the  Gospels 
are  like  other  books,  full  of  mistakes,  and  credulous,  like  the 
people  of  the  time  ;  and  therefore  you  can't  take  what  they  say 
as  you  used  to  take  it.  But  what  does  it  all  quite  mean  ?  Oh, 
I  am  not  clever — I  cannot  see  my  way  clear  from  thing  to  thing 
as  you  do.  If  there  are  mistakes,  does  it  matter  so — so — terribly 
to  you  ? '  and  she  faltered.  '  Do  you  think  nothing  is  true  be- 
cause something  may  be  false  ?  Did  not — did  not — Jesus  still 
live,  and  die,  and  rise  again  ? — can  you  doubt — do  you  doubt — 
that  He  rose — that  He  is  God — that  He  is  in  heaven — that  we 
shall  see  Him  ? ' 

She  threw  an  intensity  into  every  word,  which  made  the 
short  breathless  questions  thrill  through  him,  through  the 
nature  saturated  and  steeped  as  hers  was  in  Christian  asso- 
ciation, with  a  bitter  accusing  force.  But  he  did  not  flinch 
from  them. 

'I  can  believe  no  longer  in  an  Incarnation  and  Resurrection,' 
he  said  slowly,  but  with  a  resolute  plainness.  '  Christ  is  risen 
in  our  hearts,  in  the  Christian  life  of  charity.  Miracle  is  a 
natural  product  of  human  feeling  and  imagination ;  and  God 
was  in  Jesus — pre-eminently,  as  He  is  in  all  great  souls,  but 
not  otherwise  —  not  otherwise  in  kind  than  He  is  in  me  or 
you.' 

His  voice  dropped  to  a  whisper.    She  grew  paler  and  paler. 

'  So  to  you,'  she  said  presently  in  the  same  strange  altered 
voice.  '  My  father — when  I  saw  that  light  on  his  face  before 
he  died,  when  I  heard  him  cry,  "  Master,  /  come  !  "  was  dying — 
deceived — deluded.  Perhaps  even,'  and  she  trembled,  'you 
think  it  ends  here — our  life — our  love  ? ' 

It  was  agony  to  him  to  see  her  driving  herself  through  this 
piteous  catechism.  The  lantern  of  memory  flashed  a  moment 
on  to  the  immortal  picture  of  Faust  and  Margaret.  Was  it  not 
only  that  winter  they  had  read  the  scene  together  ? 

Forcibly  he  possessed  himself  once  more  of  those  closely 
locked  hands,  pressing  their  coldness  on  his  own  burning  eyes 
and  forehead  in  hopeless  silence. 

'  Do  you,  Robert  1 '  she  repeated  insistently.  _ 

'I  know  nothing,'  he  said,  his  eyes  still  hidden.  'I  know 
nothing !  But  I  trust  God  with  all  that  is  dearest  to  me, 
with  our  love,  with  the  soul  that  is  His  breath,  His  work 
in  us ! ' 

The  pressure  of  her  despair  seemed  to  be  wringing  his  own 
faith  out  of  him,  forcing  into  definiteness  things  and  thoughts 
that  had  been  lying  in  an  accepted,  even  a  welcomed,  ob- 
scurity. 


CHAP,  xxvin  CRISIS  365 

She  tried  again  to  draw  her  hands  away,  but  he  would  not 
let  them  go.  '  And  the  end  of  it  all,  Robert  ? '  she  said — '  the 
end  of  it?' 

Never  did  he  forget  the  note  of  that  question,  the  desolation 
of  it,  the  indefinable  change  of  accent.  It  drove  him  into  a 
harsh  abruptness  of  reply. 

'  The  end  of  it — so  far — must  be,  if  I  remain  an  honest  man, 
that  I  must  give  up  my  living,  that  I  must  cease  to  be  a  min- 
ister of  the  Church  of  England.  What  the  course  of  our  life 
after  that  shall  be  is  in  your  hands — absolutely.' 

She  caught  her  breath  painfully.  His  heart  was  breaking 
for  her,  and  yet  there  was  something  in  her  manner  now  which 
kept  down  caresses  and  repressed  all  words. 

Suddenly,  however,  as  he  sat  there  mutely  watching  her,  he 
found  her  at  his  knees,  her  dear  arms  around  him,  her  face 
against  his  breast. 

'  Kobert,  my  husband,  my  darling,  it  cannot  be  !  It  is  a  mad- 
ness— a  delusion.  God  is  trying  you,  and  me  !  You  cannot  be 
planning  so  to  desert  Him,  so  to  deny  Christ — you  cannot,  my 
husband.  Come  away  with  me,  away  from  books  and  work, 
into  some  quiet  place  where  He  can  make  Himself  heard.  You 
are  overdone,  overdriven.  Do  nothing  now — say  nothing — ex- 
cept to  me.  Be  patient  a  little,  and  He  will  give  you  back 
Himself !  What  can  books  and  arguments  matter  to  you  or 
me  ?  Have  we  not  known  and  felt  Him  as  He  is — have  we  not, 
Robert  ?  Come  ! ' 

She  pushed  herself  backwards,  smiling  at  him  with  an  ex- 
quisite tenderness.  The  tears  were  streaming  down  her  cheeks. 
They  were  wet  on  his  own.  Another  moment  and  Robert  would 
have  lost  the  only  clue  which  remained  to  him  through  the 
mists  of  this  bewildering  world.  He  would  have  yielded  again 
as  he  had  many  times  yielded  before,  for  infinitely  less  reason, 
to  the  urgent  pressure  of  another's  individuality,  and  having 
jeopardised  love  for  truth,  he  would  now  have  murdered — or 
tried  to  murder— in  himself  the  sense  of  truth  for  love. 

But  he  did  neither. 

Holding  her  close  pressed  against  him,  he  said  in  breaks  of 
intense  speech :  '  If  you  wish,  Catherine,  I  will  wait — I  will 
wait  till  you  bid  me  speak — but  I  warn  you — there  is  something 
dead  in  me — something  gone  and  broken.  It  can  never  live 
again — except  in  forms  which  now  it  would  only  pain  you  more 
to  think  of.  It  is  not  that  I  think  differently  or  this  point  or 
that  point — but  of  life  and  religion  altogether.  I  see  God's  pur- 
poses in  quite  other  proportions  as  it  were.  Christianity  seems 
to  me  something  small  and  local.  Behind  it,  around  it — includ- 
ing it — I  see  the  great  drama  of  the  world,  sweeping  on — led  by 
God — from  change  to  change,  from  act  to  act.  It  is  not  that 
Christianity  is  false,  but  that  it  is  only  an  imperfect  human 
reflection  or  a  part  of  truth.  Truth  has  never  been,  can  never 
be,  contained  in  any  one  creed  or  system  ! ' 


366  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  iv 

She  heard,  but  through  her  exhaustion,  through  the  bitter 
sinking  of  hope,  she  only  half  understood.  Only  she  realised 
that  she  and  he  were  alike  helpless — both  struggling  in  the  grip 
of  some  force  outside  themselves,  inexorable,  ineluctable. 

Robert  felt  her  arms  relaxing,  felt  the  dead  weight  of  her 
form  against  him.  He  raised  her  to  her  feet,  he  half  carried  her 
to  the  door,  and  on  to  the  stairs.  She  was  nearly  fainting,  but 
her  will  held  it  at  bay.  He  threw  open  the  door  of  their  room, 
led  her  in,  lifted  her — unresisting — on  to  the  bed.  Then  her 
head  fell  to  one  side,  and  her  lips  grew  ashen.  In  an  instant  or 
two  he  had  done  for  her  all  that  his  medical  knowledge  could 
suggest  with  rapid  decided  hands.  She  was  not  quite  uncon- 
scious ;  she  drew  up  round  her,  as  though  with  a  strong  vague 
sense  of  chill,  the  shawl  he  laid  over  her,  and  gradually  the 
slightest  shade  of  colour  came  back  to  her  lips.  But  as  soon  as 
she  opened  her  eyes  and  met  those  of  Robert  fixed  upon  her,  the 
heavy  lids  dropped  again. 

'  Would  you  rather  be  alone  ? '  he  said  to  her,  kneeling  beside 
her. 

She  made  a  faint  affirmative  movement  of  the  head,  and  the 
cold  hand  he  had  been  chafing  tried  feebly  to  withdraw  itself. 
He  rose  at  once,  and  stood  a  moment  beside  her,  looking  down 
at  her.  Then  he  went. 


CHAPTEE  XXIX 

HE  shut  the  door  softly,  and  went  downstairs  again.  It  was 
between  ten  and  eleven.  The  lights  in  the  lower  passage  were 
just  extinguished  ;  every  one  else  in  the  house  had  gone  to  bed. 
Mechanically  he  stooped  and  put  away  the  child's  bricks,  he 
pushed  the  chairs  back  into  their  places,  and  then  he  paused  a 
while  before  the  open  window.  But  there  was  not  a  tremor  on 
the  set  face.  He  felt  himself  capable  of  no  more  emotion.  The 
fount  of  feeling,  of  pain,  was  for  the  moment  dried  up.  What 
he  was  mainly  noticing  was  the  effect  of  some  occasional  gusts 
of  night- wind  on  the  moonlit  cornfield ;  the  silver  ripples  they 
sent  through  it ;  the  shadows  thrown  by  some  great  trees  in  the 
western  corners  of  the  field  ;  the  glory  of  the  moon  itself  in  the 
pale  immensity  of  the  sky. 

Presently  he  turned  away,  leaving  one  lamp  still  burning  in 
the  room,  softly  unlocked  the  hall  door,  took  his  hat,  and  went 
out.  He  walked  up  and  down  the  woodpath  or  sat  on  the  bench 
there  for  some  time,  thinking  indeed,  but  thinking  with  a  certain 
stern  practical  dryness.  Whenever  he  felt  the  thrill  of  feeling 
stealing  over  him  again,  he  would  make  a  sharp  effort  at  repres- 
sion. Physically  he  could  not  bear  much  more,  and  he  knew  it. 
A  part  remained  for  him  to  play,  which  must  be  played  with 
tact,  with  prudence,  and  with  firmness.  Strength  and  nerves 


CHAP,  xxix  CRISIS  367 

had  been  sufficiently  weakened  already.  For  his  wife's  sake, 
his  people's  sake,  his  honourable  reputation's  sake,  he  must 
guard  himself  from  a  collapse  which  might  mean  far  more  than 
physical  failure. 

So  in  the  most  patient  methodical  way  he  began  to  plan  out 
the  immediate  future.  As  to  waiting,  the  matter  was  still  in 
Catherine's  hands  ;  but  he  knew  that  finely  tempered  soul ;  he 
knew  that  when  she  had  mastered  her  poor  woman's  self,  as  she 
had  always  mastered  it  from  her  childhood,  she  would  not  bid 
him  wait.  He  hardly  took  the  possibility  into  consideration. 
The  proposal  had  had  some  reality  in  his  eyes  when  he  went 
to  see  Mr.  Grey  ;  now  it  had  none,  though  he  could  hardly  have 
explained  why. 

He  had  already  made  arrangements  with  an  old  Oxford 
friend  to  take  his  duty  during  his  absence  on  the  Continent.  It 
had  been  originally  suggested  that  this  Mr.  Armitstead  should 
come  to  Murewell  on  the  Monday  following  the  Sunday  they 
were  now  approaching,  spend  a  few  days  with  them  before  their 
departure,  and  be  left  to  his  own  devices  in  the  house  and  parish, 
about  the  Thursday  or  Friday.  An  intense  desire  now  seized 
Robert  to  get  hold  of  the  man  at  once,  before  the  next  Sunday. 
It  was  strange  how  the  interview  with  his  wife  seemed  to  have 
crystallised,  precipitated,  everything.  How  infinitely  more  real 
the  whole  matter  looked  to  him  since  the  afternoon !  It  had 
passed — at  any  rate  for  the  time — out  of  the  region  of  thought, 
into  the  hurrying  evolution  of  action,  and  as  soon  as  action 
began  it  was  characteristic  of  Robert's  rapid  energetic  nature 
to  feel  this  thirst,  to  make  it  as  prompt,  as  complete,  as  possible. 
The  fiery  soul  yearned  for  a  fresh  consistency,  though  it  were  a 
consistency  of  loss  and  renunciation. 

To-morrow  he  must  write  to  the  bishop.  The  bishop's  resi- 
dence was  only  eight  or  ten  miles  from  Murewell ;  he  supposed 
his  interview  with  him  would  take  place  about  Monday  or 
Tuesday.  He  could  see  the  tall  stooping  figure  of  the  kindly 
old  man  rising  to  meet  him  ;  he  knew  exactly  the  sort  of  argu- 
ments that  would  be  brought  to  bear  upon  him.  Oh,  that  it 
were  done  with — this  wearisome  dialectical  necessity  !  His  life 
for  months  had  been  one  long  argument.  If  he  were  but  left 
free  to  feel,  and  live  again  ! 

The  practical  matter  which  weighed  most  heavily  upon  him 
was  the  function  connected  with  the  opening  of  the  new  Insti- 
tute, which  had  been  fixed  for  the  Saturday — the  next  day  but 
one.  How  was  he — but  much  more  how  was  Catherine — to  get 
through  it  1  His  lips  would  be  sealed  as  to  any  possible  with- 
drawal from  the  living,  for  he  could  not  by  then  have  seen  the 
bishop.  He  looked  forward  to  the  gathering,  the  crowds,  the 
local  enthusiasm,  the  signs  of  his  own  popularity,  with  a  sick- 
ening distaste.  The  one  thing  real  to  him  through  it  all  would 
be  Catherine's  white  face,  and  their  bitter  joint  consciousness. 

And  then  he  said  to  himself,  sharply,  that  his  own  feelings 


368  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  rv 

counted  for  nothing.  Catherine  should  be  tenderly  shielded 
from  all  avoidable  pain,  but  for  himself  there  must  be  no  flinch- 
ing, no  self-indulgent  weakness.  Did  he  not  owe  every  last 
hour  he  had  to  give  to  the  people  amongst  whom  he  had  planned 
to  spend  the  best  energies  of  life,  and  for  whom  his  own  act 
was  about  to  part  him  in  this  lame  impotent  fashion  1 

Midnight !  The  sounds  rolled  silverly  out,  effacing  the  soft 
murmurs  of  the  night.  So  the  long  interminable  day  was  over, 
and  a  new  morning  had  begun.  He  rose,  listening  to  the  echoes 
of  the  bell,  and — as  the  tide  of  feeling  surged  back  upon  him — 
passionately  commending  the  new-born  day  to  God. 

Then  he  turned  towards  the  house,  put  the  light  out  in  the 
drawing-room,  and  went  upstairs,  stepping  cautiously.  He 
opened  the  door  of  Catherine's  room.  The  moonlight  was 
streaming  in  through  the  white  blinds.  Catherine,  who  had 
undressed,  was  lying  now  with  her  face  hidden  in  the  pillow, 
and  one  white-sleeved  arm  flung  across  little  Mary's  cot.  The 
night  was  hot,  and  the  child  would  evidently  have  thrown  off 
all  its  coverings  had  it  not  been  for  the  mother's  hand,  which 
lay  lightly  on  the  tiny  shoulder,  keeping  one  thin  blanket  in  its 
place. 

'  Catherine,'  he  whispered,  standing  beside  her. 

She  turned,  and  by  the  light  of  the  candle  he  held  shaded 
from  her  he  saw  the  austere  remoteness  of  her  look,  as  of  one 
who  had  been  going  through  deep  waters  of  misery,  alone  with 
God.  His  heart  sank.  For  the  first  time  that  look  seemed  to 
exclude  him  from  her  inmost  life. 

He  sank  down  beside  her,  took  the  hand  lying  on  the  child, 
and  laid  down  his  head  upon  it,  mutely  kissing  it.  But  he  said 
nothing.  Of  what  further  avail  could  words  be  just  then  to 
either  of  them  1  Only  he  felt  through  every  fibre  the  coldness, 
the  irresponsiveness  of  those  fingers  lying  in  his. 

'  Would  it  prevent  your  sleeping,'  he  asked  her  presently,  '  if 
I  came  to  read  here,  as  I  used  to  when  you  were  ill  1  I  could 
shade  the  light  from  you,  of  course.' 

She  raised  her  head  suddenly. 

'  But  you — you  ought  to  sleep.' 

Her  tone  was  anxious,  but  strangely  quiet  and  aloof. 

'  Impossible  ! '  he  said,  pressing  his  hand  over  his  eyes  as  he 
rose.  At  any  rate  I  will  read  first.' 

His  sleeplessness  at  any  time  of  excitement  or  strain  was  so 
inveterate,  and  so  familiar  to  them  both  by  now,  that  she  could 
say  nothing.  She  turned  away  with  a  long  sobbing  breath, 
which  seemed  to  go  through  her  from  head  to  foot.  He  stood 
a  moment  beside  her,  fighting  strong  impulses  of  remorse  and 
passion,  and  ultimately  maintaining  silence  and  self-control. 

In  another  minute  or  two  he  was  sitting  beside  her  feet,  in  a 
low  chair  drawn  to  the  edge  of  the  bed,  the  light  arranged  so  as 
to  reach  his  book  without  touching  either  mother  or  child.  He 
had  run  over  the  book-shelf  in  his  own  room,  shrinking  pain- 


CHAP,  xxix  CRISIS  369 

fully  from  any  of  his  common  religious  favourites  as  one  shrinks 
from  touching  a  still  sore  and  throbbing  nerve,  and  had  at  last 
carried  off  a  volume  of  Spenser. 

And  so  the  night  began  to  wear  away.  For  the  first  hour  or 
two,  every  now  and  then,  a  stifled  sob  would  make  itself  just 
faintly  heard.  It  was  a  sound  to  wring  the  heart,  for  what 
it  meant  was  that  not  even  Catherine  Elsmere's  extraordinary 
powers  of  self -suppression  could  avail  to  check  the  outward 
expression  of  an  inward  torture.  Each  time  it  came  and  went, 
it  seemed  to  Elsmere  that  a  fraction  of  his  youth  went  with  it. 

At  last  exhaustion  brought  her  a  restless  sleep.  As  soon  as 
Elsmere  caught  the  light  breathing  which  told  him  she  was  not 
conscious  of  her  grief,  or  of  him,  his  book  slipped  on  to  his  knee. 

1  Open  the  temple  gates  unto  my  love, 

Open  them  wide  that  she  may  enter  in, 
And  all  the  posts  adorn  as  doth  behove, 

And  all  the  pillars  deck  with  garlands  trim, 
For  to  receive  this  saint  with  honour  due 
That  cometh  in  to  you. 

With  trembling  steps  and  humble  reverence, 
She  cometh  in  before  the  Almighty's  view.' 

The  leaves  fell  over  as  the  book  dropped,  and  these  lines, 
which  had  been  to  him,  as  to  other  lovers,  the  utterance  of  his 
own  bridal  joy,  emerged.  They  brought  about  him  a  host  of 
images — a  little  gray  church  penetrated  everywhere  by  the  roar 
of  a  swollen  river ;  outside,  a  road  filled  with  empty  farmers' 
carts,  and  shouting  children  carrying  branches  of  mountain-ash 
— winding  on  and  up  into  the  heart  of  wild  hills  dyed  with  red- 
dening fern,  the  sun- gleams  stealing  from  crag  to  crag,  and 
shoulder  to  shoulder  ;  inside,  row  after  row  of  intent  faces,  all 
turned  towards  the  central  passage,  and,  moving  towards  him, 
a  figure  '  clad  all  in  white,  that  seems  a  virgin  best,'  whose  every 
step  brings  nearer  to  him  the  heaven  of  his  heart's  desire. 
Everything  is  plain  to  him — Mrs.  Thornburgh's  round  cheeks 
and  marvellous  curls  and  jubilant  airs,  Mrs.  Ley  burn's  mild 
and  tearful  pleasure,  the  vicar's  solid  satisfaction.  With  what 
confiding  joy  had  those  who  loved  her  given  her  to  him  !  And 
he  knows  well  that  out  of  all  griefs,  the  grief  he  has  brought  upon 
her  in  two  short  years  is  the  one  which  will  seem  to  her  hardest 
to  bear.  Very  few  women  of  the  present  day  could  feel  this 
particular  calamity  as  Catherine  Elsmere  must  feel  it. 

'  Was  it  a  crime  to  love  and  win  you,  my  darling  ? '  he  cried 
to  her  in  his  heart.  '  Ought  I  to  have  had  more  self-knowledge? 
could  I  have  guessed  where  I  was  taking  you  ?  Oh,  how  could 
I  know — how  could  I  know.' 

But  it  was  impossible  to  him  to  sink  himself  wholly  in  the 
past.  Inevitably  such  a  nature  as  Elsmere's  turns  very  quickly 
from  despair  to  nope ;  from  the  sense  of  failure  to  the  passionate 
planning  of  new  effort.  In  time  will  he  not  be  able  to  comfort 
her,  and,  after  a  miserable  moment  of  transition,  to  repair  her 

2B 


370  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  iv 

trust  in  him  and  make  their  common  life  once  more  rich  towards 
God  and  man1?  There  must  be  painful  readjustment  and  fric- 
tion, no  doubt.  He  tries  to  see  the  facts  as  they  truly  are,  fight- 
ing against  his  own  optimist  tendencies,  and  realising  as  best 
he  can  all  the  changes  which  his  great  change  must  introduce 
into  their  most  intimate  relations.  But  after  all  can  love  and 
honesty  and  a  clear  conscience  do  nothing  to  bridge  over,  nay, 
to  efface,  such  differences  as  theirs  will  be  1 

Oh  to  bring  her  to  understand  him  !  At  this  moment  he 
shrinks  painfully  from  the  thought  of  touching  her  faith — his 
own  sense  of  loss  is  too  heavy,  too  terrible.  But  if  she  will  only 
be  still  open  with  him  ! — still  give  him  her  deepest  heart,  any 
lasting  difference  between  them  will  surely  be  impossible.  Each 
will  complete  the  other,  and  love  knit  up  the  ravelled  strands 
again  into  a  stronger  unity. 

Gradually  he  lost  himself  in  half -articulate  prayer,  in  the 
solemn  girding  of  the  will  to  this  future  task  of  a  recreating 
love.  And  by  the  time  the  morning  light  had  well  established 
itself  sleep  had  fallen  on  him.  When  he  became  sensible  of  the 
longed-for  drowsiness,  he  merely  stretched  out  a  tired  hand  and 
drew  over  him  a  shawl  hanging  at  the  foot  of  the  bed.  He  was 
too  utterly  worn  out  to  think  of  moving. 

When  he  woke  the  sun  was  streaming  into  the  room,  and 
behind  him  sat  the  tiny  Mary  on  the  edge  of  the  bed,  the 
rounded  apple  cheeks  and  wild-bird  eyes  aglow  with  mischief 
and  delight.  She  had  climbed  out  of  her  cot,  and,  finding  no 
check  to  her  progress,  had  crept  on,  till  now  she  sat  triumph- 
antly, with  one  diminutive  leg  and  rosy  foot  doubled  under  her, 
and  her  father's  thick  hair  at  the  mercy  of  her  invading  fingers, 
which,  however,  were  as  yet  touching  him  half  timidly,  as 
though  something  in  his  sleep  had  awed  the  baby  sense. 

But  Catherine  was  gone. 

He  sprang  up  with  a  start.  Mary  was  frightened  by  the 
abrupt  movement,  perhaps  disappointed  by  the  escape  of  her 
prey,  and  raised  a  sudden  wail. 

He  carried  her  to  her  nurse,  even  forgetting  to  kiss  the  little 
wet  cheek,  ascertained  that  Catherine  was  not  in  the  house,  and 
then  came  back,  miserable,  with  the  bewilderment  of  sleep  still 
upon  him.  A  sense  of  wrong  rose  high  within  him.  How  could 
she  have  left  him  thus  without  a  word  1 

It  had  been  her  way,  sometimes,  during  the  summer,  to  go 
out  early  to  one  or  other  of  the  sick  folk  who  were  under  her 
especial  charge.  Possibly  she  had  gone  to  a  woman,  just  con- 
fined, on  the  farther  side  of  the  village,  who  yesterday  had  been 
in  danger. 

But,  whatever  explanation  he  could  make  for  himself,  he  was 
none  the  less  irrationally  wretched.  He  bathed,  dressed,  and 
sat  down  to  his  solitary  meal  in  a  state  of  tension  and  agitation 
indescribable.  All  the  exaltation,  the  courage  of  the  night,  was 
gone. 


CHAP,  xxix  CRISIS  371 

Nine  o'clock,  ten  o'clock,  and  no  sign  of  Catherine. 

'  Your  mistress  must  have  been  detained  somewhere,'  he  said 
as  quietly  and  carelessly  as  he  could  to  Susan,  the  parlour-maid, 
who  had  been  with  them  since  their  marriage.  '  Leave  breakfast 
things  for  one.' 

'Mistress  took  a  cup  of  milk  when  she  went  out,  cook 
says,'  observed  the  little  maid  with  a  consoling  intention,  won- 
dering the  while  at  the  rector's  haggard  mien  and  restless 
movements. 

'  Nursing  other  people  indeed  ! '  she  observed  severely  down- 
stairs, glad  as  we  all  are  at  times  to  pick  holes  in  excellence 
which  is  inconveniently  high.  '  Missis  had  a  deal  better  stay  at 
home  and  nurse  him  I ' 

The  day  was  excessively  hot.  Not  a  leaf  moved  in  *the 
garden  ;  over  the  cornfield  the  air  danced  in  long  vibrations  of 
heat ;  the  woods  and  hills  beyond  were  indistinct  and  colourless. 
Their  dog  Dandy  lay  sleeping  in  the  sun,  waking  up  every  now 
and  then  to  avenge  himself  on  the  flies.  On  the  far  edge  of  the 
cornfield  reaping  was  beginning.  Robert  stood  on  the  edge  of 
the  sunk  fence,  his  blind  eyes  resting  on  the  line  of  men.  his  ear 
catching  the  shouts  of  the  farmer  directing  operations  from  his 
gray  horse.  He  could  do  nothing.  The  night  before,  in  the 
wood-path,  he  had  clearly  mapped  out  the  day's  work.  A 
mass  of  business  was  waiting,  clamouring  to  be  done.  He  tried 
to  begin  on  this  or  that,  and  gave  up  everything  with  a  groan, 
wandering  out  again  to  the  gate  on  to  the  wood-path  to  sweep 
the  distances  of  road  or  field  with  hungry  straining  eyes. 

The  wildest  fears  had  taken  possession  of  him.  Running  in 
his  head  was  a  passage  from  The  confessions,  describing  Monica's 
horror  of  her  son's  heretical  opinions.  '  Shrinking  from  and  de- 
testing the  blasphemies  of  his  error,  she  began  to  doubt  whether 
it  was  right  in  her  to  allow  her  son  to  live  in  her  house  and  to 
eat  at  the  same  table  with  her ; '  and  the  mother's  heart,  he  re- 
membered, could  only  be  convinced  of  the  lawfulness  of  its  own 
yearning  by  a  prophetic  vision  of  the  youth's  conversion.  He 
recalled,  with  a  shiver,  how  in  the  life  of  Madame  Guyon,  after 
describing  the  painful  and  agonising  death  of  a  kind  but  com- 
paratively irreligious  husband,  she  quietly  adds,  '  As  soon  as  I 
heard  that  my  husband  had  just  expired,  I  said  to  Thee,  O  my 
God,  Thou  hast  broken  my  bonds,  and  I  will  offer  to  Thee  a 
sacrifice  of  praise  ! '  He  thought  of  John  Henry  Newman,  dis- 
owning all  the  ties  of  kinship  with  his  younger  brother  because 
of  divergent  views  on  the  question  of  baptismal  regeneration ; 
of  the  long  tragedy  of  Blanco  White's  life,  caused  by  the  slow 
dropping-off  of  friend  after  friend,  on  the  ground  of  heretical 
belief.  What  right  had  he,  or  any  one  in  such  a  strait  as  his, 
to  assume  that  the  faith  of  the  present  is  no  longer  capable  of 
the  same  stern  self -destructive  consistency  as  the  faith  of  the 
past  ?  He  knew  that  to  such  Christian  purity,  such  Christian 
inwardness  as  Catherine's,  the  ultimate  sanction  and  legitimacy 


372  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  TV 

of  marriage  rest,  both  in  theory  and  practice,  on  a  common  ac- 
ceptance of  the  definite  commands  and  promises  of  a  miraculous 
revelation.  He  had  had  a  proof  of  it  in  Catherine's  passionate 
repugnance  to  the  idea  of  Rose's  marriage  with  Edward 
Langham. 

Eleven  o'clock  striking  from  the  distant  tower.  He  walked 
desperately  along  the  wood-path,  meaning  to  go  through  the 
copse  at  the  end  of  it  towards  the  park,  and  look  there.  He  had 
just  passed  into  the  copse,  a  thick  interwoven  mass  of  young 
trees,  when  he  heard  the  sound  of  the  gate  which  on  the  farther 
side  of  it  led  on  to  the  road.  He  hurried  on  ;  the  trees  closed 
behind  him ;  the  grassy  path  broadened  ;  and  there,  under  an 
arch  of  young  oak  and  hazel,  stood  Catherine,  arrested  by  the 
sound  of  his  step.  He,  too,  stopped  at  the  sight  of  her ;  he 
could  not  go  on.  Husband  and  wife  looked  at  each  other  one 
long  quivering  moment.  Then  Catherine  sprang  forward  with 
a  sob  and  threw  herself  on  his  breast. 

They  clung  to  each  other,  she  in  a  passion  of  tears — tears  of 
such  self-abandonment  as  neither  Robert  nor  any  other  living 
soul  had  ever  seen  Catherine  Elsmere  shed  before.  As  for  him 
he  was  trembling  from  head  to  foot,  his  arms  scarcely  strong 
enough  to  hold  her,  his  young  worn  face  bent  down  over  her. 

'  Oh,  Robert ! '  she  sobbed  at  last,  putting  up  her  hand  and 
touching  his  hair,  '  you  look  so  pale,  so  sad.' 

'  I  have  you  again  ! '  he  said  simply. 

A  thrill  of  remorse  ran  through  her. 

'  I  went  away,'  she  murmured,  her  face  still  hidden — '  I  went 
away,  because  when  I  woke  up  it  all  seemed  to  me,  suddenly, 
too  ghastly  to  be  believed ;  I  could  not  stay  still  and  bear  it. 
But,  Robert,  Robert,  I  kissed  you  as  I  passed  !  I  was  so  thank- 
ful you  could  sleep  a  little  and  forget.  I  hardly  know  where  I 
have  been  most  of  the  time — I  think  I  have  been  sitting  in  a 
corner  of  the  park,  where  no  one  ever  comes.  I  began  to  think 
of  all  you  said  to  me  last  night — to  put  it  together — to  try  and 
understand  it,  and  it  seemed  to  me  more  and  more  horrible  !  I 
thought  of  what  it  would  be  like  to  have  to  hide  my  prayers 
from  you — my  faith  in  Christ — my  hope  of  heaven.  I  thought 
of  bringing  up  the  child — how  all  that  was  vital  to  me  would 
be  a  superstition  .to  you,  which  you  would  bear  with  for  my 
sake.  I  thought  of  death,'  and  she  shuddered — '  your  death,  or 
my  death,  and  how  this  change  in  you  would  cleave  a  gulf  of 
misery  between  us.  And  then  I  thought  of  losing  my  own  faith, 
of  denying  Christ.  It  was  a  nightmare — I  saw  myself  on  a  long 
road,  escaping  with  Mary  in  my  arms,  escaping  from  you  !  Oh, 
Robert !  it  wasn't  only  for  myself,' — and  she  clung  to  him  as 
though  she  were  a  child,  confessing,  explaining  away,  some 
grievous  fault  hardly  to  be  forgiven.  '  I  was  agonised  by  the 
thought  that  I  was  not  my  own — I  and  my  child  were  Christ's. 
Could  I  risk  what  was  His  ?  Other  men  and  women  had  died, 
had  given  up  all  for  His  sake.  Is  there  no  one  now  strong 


CHAP,  xxx  CRISIS  373 

enough  to  suffer  torment,  to  kill  even  love  itself  rather  than 
deny  Him — rather  than  crucify  Him  afresh  ? ' 

She  paused,  struggling  for  breath.  The  terrible  excitement 
of  that  bygone  moment  had  seized  upon  her  again  and  com- 
municated itself  to  him. 

'  And  then — and  then,'  she  said  sobbing,  '  I  don't  know  how 
it  was.  One  moment  I  was  sitting  up  looking  straight  before 
me,  without  a  tear,  thinking  of  what  was  the  least  I  must  do, 
even — even — if  you  and  I  stayed  together — of  all  the  hard  com- 
pacts and  conditions  I  must  make — judging  you  all  the  while 
from  a  long,  long  distance,  and  feeling  as  though  I  had  buried 
the  old  self— sacrificed  the  old  heart — for  ever  !  And  the  next 
I  was  lying  on  the  ground  crying  for  you,  Robert,  crying  for 
you  !  Your  face  had  come  back  to  me  as  you  lay  there  in  the 
early  morning  light.  I  thought  how  I  had  kissed  you — how 
pale  and  gray  and  thin  you  looked.  Oh,  how  I  loathed  myself  ! 
That  I  should  think  it  could  be  God's  will  that  I  should  leave 
you,  or  torture  you,  my  poor  husband !  I  had  not  only  been 
wicked  towards  you — I  had  offended  Christ.  I  could  think  of 
nothing  as  I  lay  there — again  and  again — but  "  Little  children, 
love  one  another ;  little  children,  love  one  another."  Oh,  my 
beloved,' — and  she  looked  up  with  the  solemnest,  tenderest 
smile  breaking  on  the  marred  tear-stained  face, — '  I  will  never 
give  up  hope,  I  will  pray  for  you  night  and  day.  God  will 
bring  you  back.  You  cannot  lose  yourself  so.  No,  no !  His 
grace  is  stronger  than  our  wills.  But  I  will  not  preach  to  you 
— I  will  not  persecute  you — I  will  only  live  beside  you — in  your 
heart — and  love  you  always.  Oh,  how  could  I— how  could  I 
have  such  thoughts  ! ' 

And  again  she  broke  off,  weeping,  as  if  to  the  tender  torn 
heart  the  only  crime  that  could  not  be  forgiven  was  its  own 
offence  against  love.  As  for  him  he  was  beyond  speech.  If 
he  had  ever  lost  his  vision  of  God,  his  wife's  love  would  that 
moment  have  given  it  back  to  him. 

'  Robert,'  she  said  presently,  urged  on  by  the  sacred  yearning 
to  heal,  to  atone,  'I  will  not  complain — I  will  not  ask  you  to 
wait.  I  take  your  word  for  it  that  it  is  best  not,  that  it  would 
do  no  good.  The  only  hope  is  in  time — and  prayer.  I  must 
suffer,  dear,  I  must  be  weak  sometimes  ;  but  oh,  I  am  so  sorry 
for  you  !  Kiss  me,  forgive  me,  Robert ;  I  will  be  your  faithful 
wife  unto  our  lives'  end.' 

He  kissed  her,  and  in  that  kiss,  so  sad,  so  pitiful,  so  clinging, 
their  new  life  was  born. 


CHAPTER  XXX 

BUT  the  problem  of  these  two  lives  was  not  solved  by  a  burst 
of  feeling.    Without  that  determining  impulse  of  love  and  pity 


374  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  iv 

in  Catherine's  heart  the  salvation  of  an  exquisite  bond  might 
indeed  have  been  impossible.  But  in  spite  of  it  the  laws  of 
character  had  still  to  work  themselves  inexorably  out  on  either 
side. 

The  whole  gist  of  the  matter  for  Elsmere  lay  really  in  this 
question  :  Hidden  in  Catherine's  nature,  was  there,  or  was  there 
not,  the  true  stuff  of  fanaticism  ?  Madame  Guyon  left  her  infant 
children  to  the  mercies  of  chance,  while  she  followed  the  voice 
of  God  to  the  holy  war  with  heresy.  Under  similar  conditions 
Catherine  Elsmere  might  have  planned  the  same.  Could  she 
ever  have  carried  it  out  ? 

And  yet  the  question  is  still  ill  stated.  For  the  influences  of 
our  modern  time  on  religious  action  are  so  blunting  and  dulling, 
because  in  truth  the  religious  motive  itself  is  being  constantly 
modified,  whether  the  religious  person  knows  it  or  not.  Is  it 
possible  now  for  a  good  woman  with  a  heart,  in  Catherine 
Elsmere's  position,  to  maintain  herself  against  love,  and  all 
those  subtle  forces  to  which  such  a  change  as  Elsmere's  opens 
the  house  doors,  without  either  hardening,  or  greatly  yielding  ? 
Let  Catherine's  further  story  give  some  sort  of  an  answer. 

Poor  soul !  As  they  sat  together  in  the  study,  after  he  had 
brought  her  home,  Robert,  with  averted  eyes,  went  through  the 
plans  he  had  already  thought  into  shape.  Catherine  listened, 
saying  almost  nothing.  But  never,  never  had  she  loved  this 
life  of  theirs  so  well  as  now  that  she  was  called  on,  at  barely  a 
week's  notice,  to  give  it  up  for  ever  !  For  Robert's  scheme,  in 
which  her  reason  fully  acquiesced,  was  to  keep  to  their  plan  of 
going  to  Switzerland,  he  having  first,  of  course,  settled  all  things 
with  the  bishop,  and  having  placed  his  living  in  the  hands  of 
Mowbray  Elsmere.  When  they  left  the  rectory,  in  a  week  or 
ten  days'  time,  he  proposed,  in  fact,  his  voice  almost  inaudible 
as  he  did  so,  that  Catherine  should  leave  it  for  good. 

'  Everybody  had  better  suppose,'  he  said  choking,  '  that  we 
are  coming  back.  Of  course  we  need  say  nothing.  Armitstead 
will  be  here  for  next  week  certainly.  Then  afterwards  I  can 
come  down  and  manage  everything.  I  shall  get  it  over  in  a  day 
if  I  can,  and  see  nobody.  I  cannot  say  good-bye,  nor  can  you.' 

'  And  next  Sunday,  Robert  ? '  she  asked  him,  after  a  pause. 

'  I  shall  write  to  Armitstead  this  afternoon  and  ask  him,  if 
he  possibly  can,  to  come  to-morrow  afternoon,  instead  of  Mon- 
day, and  take  the  service.' 

Catherine's  hands  clasped  each  other  still  more  closely.  So 
then  she  had  heard  her  husband's  voice  for  the  last  time  in  the 
public  ministry  of  the  Church,  in  prayer,  in  exhortation,  in 
benediction  !  One  of  the  most  sacred  traditions  of  her  life  was 
struck  from  her  at  a  blow. 

It  was  long  before  either  of  them  spoke  again.  Then  she 
ventured  another  question. 

'  And  have  you  any  idea  of  what  we  shall  do  next,  Robert— 
of — of  our  future  1 ' 


CHAP,  xxx  CRISIS  375 

'  Shall  we  try  London  for  a  little  ? '  he  answered  in  a  queer 
strained  voice,  leaning  against  the  window,  and  looking  out, 
that  he  might  not  see  her.  'I  should  find  work  among  the 
poor — so  would  you — and  I  could  go  on  with  my  book.  And 
your  mother  and  sister  will  probably  be  there  part  of  the 
winter.' 

She  acquiesced  silently.  How  mean  and  shrunken  a  future 
it  seemed  to  them  both,  beside  the  wide  and  honourable  range 
of  his  clergyman's  life  as  he  and  she  had  developed  it.  But  she 
did  not  dwell  long  on  that.  Her  thoughts  were  suddenly  in- 
vaded by  the  memory  of  a  cottage  tragedy  in  which  she  had 
recently  taken  a  prominent  part.  A  girl,  a  child  of  fifteen,  from 
one  of  the  crowded  Mile  End  hovels,  had  gone  at  Christmas  to 
a  distant  farm  as  servant,  and  come  back  a  month  ago,  ruined, 
the  victim  of  an  outrage  over  which  Elsmere  had  ground  his 
teeth  in  fierce  and  helpless  anger.  Catherine  had  found  her  a 
shelter,  and  was  to  see  her  through  her  '  trouble ' ;  the  girl,  a 
frail  half-  witted  creature,  who  could  find  no  words  even  to 
bewail  herself,  clinging  to  her  the  while  with  the  dumbest, 
pitifulest  tenacity. 

How  could  she  leave  that  girl  ?  It  was  as  if  all  the  fibres  of 
life  were  being  violently  wrenched  from  all  their  natural  con- 
nections. 

'  Robert ! '  she  cried  at  last  with  a  start.  '  Had  you  forgotten 
the  Institute  to-morrow  ? ' 

'No — no,'  he  said  with  the  saddest  smile.  'No,  I  had  not 
forgotten  it.  Don't  go,  Catherine — don't  go.  I  must.  But  why 
should  you  go  through  it  ? ' 

'  But  there  are  all  those  flags  and  wreaths,'  she  said,  getting 
up  in  pained  bewilderment.  '  I  must  go  and  look  after  them.' 

He  caught  her  in  his  arms. 

'  Oh,  my  wife,  my  wife,  forgive  me ! '  It  was  a  groan  of 
misery.  She  put  up  her  hands  and  pressed  his  hair  back  from 
his  temples. 

'  I  love  you,  Robert,'  she  said  simply,  her  face  colourless,  but 
perfectly  calm. 

Half  an  hour  later,  after  he  had  worked  through  some  letters, 
he  went  into  the  workroom  and  found  her  surrounded  with 
flags,  and  a  vast  litter  of  paper  roses  and  evergreens,  which  she 
and  the  new  agent's  daughters  who  had  come  up  to  help  her 
were  putting  together  for  the  decorations  of  the  morrow.  Mary 
was  tottering  from  chair  to  chair  in  high  glee,  a  big  pink  rose 
stuck  in  the  belt  of  her  pinafore.  His  pale  wife,  trying  to  smile 
and  talk  as  usual,  her  lap  full  of  evergreens,  and  her  politeness 
exercised  by  the  chatter  of  the  two  Miss  Batesons,  seemed  to 
Robert  one  of  the  most  pitiful  spectacles  he  had  ever  seen.  He 
fled  from  it  out  into  the  village  driven  by  a  restless  longing  for 
change  and  movement. 

Here  he  found  a  large  gathering  round  the  new  Institute. 
There  were  carpenters  at  work  on  a  triumphal  arch  in  front, 


376  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  iv 

and  close  by,  an  admiring  circle  of  children  and  old  men,  hudd- 
ling in  the  shade  of  a  great  chestnut. 

Elsmere  spent  an  hour  in  the  building,  helping  and  super- 
intending, stabbed  every  now  and  then  by  the  unsuspecting 
friendliness  of  those  about  him,  or  worried  by  their  blunt 
comments  on  his  looks.  He  could  not  bear  more  than  a  glance 
into  the  new  rooms  apportioned  to  the  Naturalists'  Club.  There 
against  the  wall  stood  the  new  glass  cases  he  had  wrung  out  of 
the  squire,  with  various  new  collections  lying  near,  ready  to  be 
arranged  and  unpacked  when  time  allowed.  The  old  collections 
stood  out  bravely  in  the  added  space  and  light ;  the  walls  were 
hung  here  and  there  with  a  wonderful  set  of  geographical 
pictures  he  had  carried  off  from  a  London  exhibition,  and  fed 
his  boys  on  for  weeks  ;  the  floors  were  freshly  matted  ;  the  new 
pine  fittings  gave  out  their  pleasant  cleanly  scent ;  the  white 
paint  of  doors  and  windows  shone  in  the  August  sun.  The 
building  had  been  given  by  the  squire.  The  fittings  and  furni- 
ture had  been  mainly  of  his  providing.  What  uses  he  had 
planned  for  it  all ! — only  to  see  the  fruits  of  two  years'  effort 
out  of  doors,  and  personal  frugality  at  home,  handed  over  to 
some  possibly  unsympathetic  stranger.  The  heart  beat  pain- 
fully against  the  iron  bars  of  fate,  rebelling  against  the  power 
of  a  mental  process  so  to  affect  a  man's  whole  practical  and  social 
life! 

He  went  out  at  last  by  the  back  of  the  Institute,  where  a 
little  bit  of  garden,  spoilt  with  building  materials,  led  down  to 
a  lane. 

At  the  end  of  the  garden,  beside  the  untidy  gap  in  the  hedge 
made  by  the  builders'  carts,  he  saw  a  man  standing,  who  turned 
away  down  the  lane,  however,  as  soon  as  the  rector's  figure 
emerged  into  view. 

Robert  had  recognised  the  slouching  gait  and  unwieldy  form 
of  Henslowe.  There  were  at  this  moment  all  kinds  of  gruesome 
stories  afloat  in  the  village  about  the  ex-agent.  It  was  said 
that  he  was  breaking  up  fast ;  it  was  known  that  he  was  ex- 
tensively in  debt ;  and  the  village  shopkeepers  had  already 
held  an  agitated  meeting  or  two,  to  decide  upon  the  best  mode 
of  getting  their  money  out  of  him,  and  upon  a  joint  plan  of 
cautious  action  towards  his  custom  in  future.  The  man,  indeed, 
was  sinking  deeper  and  deeper  into  a  pit  of  sordid  misery, 
maintaining  all  the  while  a  snarling  exasperating  front  to  the 
world,  which  was  rapidly  converting  the  careless  half -malicious 
pity  wherewith  the  village  had  till  now  surveyed  his  fall  into 
that  more  active  species  of  baiting  which  the  human  animal 
is  never  very  loth  to  try  upon  the  limping  specimens  of  his 
race. 

Henslowe  stopped  and  turned  as  he  heard  the  steps  behind 
him.  Six  months'  self -murdering  had  left  ghastly  traces.  He 
was  many  degrees  nearer  the  brute  than  he  had  been  even  when 
Eobert  made  his  ineffectual  visit.  But  at  this  actual  moment 


CHAP,  xxx  CRISIS  377 

Robert's  practised  eye — for  every  English  parish  clergyman 
becomes  dismally  expert  in  the  pathology  of  drunkenness — saw 
that  there  was  no  fight  in  him.  He  was  in  one  of  the  drunkard's 
periods  of  collapse — shivering,  flabby,  starting  at  every  sound, 
a  misery  to  himself  and  a  spectacle  to  others. 

'  Mr.  Henslowe ! '  cried  Robert,  still  pursuing  him,  '  may  I 
speak  to  you  a  moment  1 ' 

The  ex-agent  turned,  his  prominent  bloodshot  eyes  glowering 
at  the  speaker.  But  he  had  to  catch  at  his  stick  for  support,  or 
at  the  nervous  shock  of  Robert's  summons  his  legs  would  have 
given  way  under  him. 

Robert  came  up  with  him  and  stood  a  second,  fronting  the 
evil  silence  of  the  other,  his  boyish  face  deeply  flushed.  Perhaps 
the  grotesqueness  of  that  former  scene  was  in  his  mind.  More- 
over, the  vestry  meetings  had  furnished  Henslowe  with  periodical 
opportunities  for  venting  his  gall  on  the  rector,  and  they  had 
never  been  neglected.  But  he  plunged  on  boldly. 

'  I  am  going  away  next  week,  Mr.  Henslowe  ;  I  shall  be  away 
some  considerable  time.  Before  I  go  I  should  like  to  ask  you 
whether  you  do  not  think  the  feud  between  us  had  better  cease. 
Why  will  you  persist  in  making  an  enemy  of  me  ?  If  I  did  you 
an  injury  it  was  neither  wittingly  nor  willingly.  I  know  you 
have  been  ill.  and  I  gather  that — that — you  are  in  trouble.  If 
I  could  stand  between  you  and  further  mischief  I  would — most 

gladly.  If  help — or — or  money '  He  paused.  He  shrewdly 

suspected,  indeed,  from  the  reports  that  reached  him,  that 
Henslowe  was  on  the  brink  of  bankruptcy. 

The  rector  had  spoken  with  the  utmost  diffidence  and  deli- 
cacy, but  Henslowe  found  energy  in  return  for  an  outburst  of 
quavering  animosity,  from  which,  however,  physical  weakness 
had  extracted  all  its  sting. 

'  I'll  thank  you  to  make  your  canting  offers  to  some  one  else, 
Mr.  Elsmere.  When  I  want  your  advice  I'll  ask  it.  Good  day 
to  you.'  And  he  turned  away  with  as  much  of  an  attempt  at 
dignity  as  his  shaking  limbs  would  allow  of. 

'Listen,  Mr.  Henslowe,'  said  Robert  firmly,  walking  beside 
him  ;  '  you  know — I  know — that  if  this  goes  on,  in  a  year's  time 
you  will  be  in  your  grave,  and  your  poor  wife  and  children 
struggling  to  keep  themselves  from  the  workhouse.  You  may 
think  that  I  have  no  right  to  preach  to  you — that  you  are  the 
older  man — that  it  is  an  intrusion.  But  what  is  the  good  of 
blinking  facts  that  you  must  know  all  the  world  knows  ?  Come, 
now,  Mr.  Henslowe,  let  us  behave  for  a  moment  as  though  this 
were  our  last  meeting.  Who  knows?  the  chances  of  life  are 
many.  Lay  down  your  grudge  against  me,  and  let  me  speak  to 
you  as  one  struggling  human  being  to  another.  The  fact  that 
you  have,  as  you  say,  become  less  prosperous,  in  some  sort 
through  me,  seems  to  give  me  a  right — to  make  it  a  duty  for  me, 
if  you  will — to  help  you  if  I  can.  Let  me  send  a  good  doctor  to 
see  you.  Let  me  implore  you  as  a  last  chance  to  put  yourself 


378  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  iv 

into  his  hands,  and  to  obey  him,  and  your  wife  ;  and  let  me,' — 
the  rector  hesitated, — '  let  me  make  things  pecuniarily  easier  for 
Mrs.  Henslowe  till  you  have  pulled  yourself  out  of  the  hole  in 
which,  by  common  report  at  least,  you  are  now.' 

Henslowe  stared  at  him,  divided  between  anger  caused  by 
the  sore  stirring  of  his  old  self-importance,  and  a  tumultuous 
flood  of  self-pity,  roused  irresistibly  in  him  by  Robert's  piercing 
frankness,  and  aided  by  his  own  more  or  less  maudlin  condition. 
The  latter  sensation  quickly  undermined  the  former  ;  he  turned 
his  back  on  the  recto.r  and  leant  over  the  railings  of  the  lane, 
shaken  by  something  it  is  hardly  worth  while  to  dignify  by  the 
name  of  emotion.  Robert  stood  by,  a  pale  embodiment  of  mingled 
judgment  and  compassion.  He  gave  the  man  a  few  moments 
to  recover  himself,  and  then,  as  Henslowe  turned  round  again, 
he  silently  and  appealingly  held  out  his  hand — the  hand  of  the 
good  man,  which  it  was  an  honour  for  such  as  Henslowe  to 
touch.  Constrained  by  the  moral  force  radiating  from  his  look, 
the  other  took  it  with  a  kind  of  helpless  sullenness. 

Then,  seizing  at  once  on  the  slight  concession,-  with  that 
complete  lack  of  inconvenient  self -consciousness,  or  hindering 
indecision,  which  was  one  of  the  chief  causes  of  his  effect  on 
men  and  women,  Robert  began  to  sound  the  broken  repulsive 
creature  as  to  his  affairs.  Bit  by  bit,  compelled  by  a  will  and 
nervous  strength  far  superior  to  his  own,  Henslowe  was  led 
into  abrupt  and  blurted  confidences  which  surprised  no  one  so 
much  as  himself.  Robert's  quick  sense  possessed  itself  of  point 
after  point,  seeing  presently  ways  of  escape  and  relief  which 
the  besotted  brain  beside  him  had  been  quite  incapable  of  de- 
vising for  itself.  They  walked  on  into  the  open  country,  and 
what  with  the  discipline  of  the  rector's  presence,  the  sobering 
effect  wrought  by  the  shock  to  pride  and  habit,  and  the  un- 
wonted brain  exercise  of  the  conversation,  the  demon  in  Hens- 
lowe had  been  for  the  moment  most  strangely  tamed  after  half 
an  hour's  talk.  Actually  some  reminiscences  of  his  old  ways  of 
speech  and  thought,  the  ways  of  the  once  prosperous  and  self- 
reliant  man  of  business,  had  reappeared  in  him  before  the  end 
of  it,  called  out  by  the  subtle  influence  of  a  manner  which 
always  attracted  to  the  surface  whatever  decent  element  there 
might  be  left  in  a  man,  and  then  instantly  gave  it  a  recognition 
which  was  more  redeeming  than  either  counsel  or  denuncia- 
tion. 

By  the  time  they  parted  Robert  had  arranged  with  his  old 
enemy  that  he  should  become  his  surety  with  a  rich  cousin  in 
Churton,  who,  always  supposing  there  were  no  risk  in  the 
matter,  and  that  benevolence  ran  on  all-fours  with  security  of 
investment,  was  prepared  to  shield  the  credit  of  the  family  by 
the  advance  of  a  sufficient  sum  of  money  to  rescue  the  ex-agent 
from  his  most  pressing  difficulties.  He  had  also  wrung  from 
him  the  promise  to  see  a  specialist  in  London — Robert  writing 
that  evening  to  make  the  appointment. 


CHAP,  xxx  CRISIS  379 

How  had  it  been  done  ?  Neither  Robert  nor  Henslowe  ever 
quite  knew.  Henslowe  walked  home  in  a  bewilderment  which 
for  once  had  nothing  to  dp  with  brandy,  but  was  simply  the 
result  of  a  moral  shock  acting  on  what  was  still  human  in  the 
man's  debased  consciousness,  just  as  electricity  acts  on  the 
bodily  frame. 

Robert,  on  the  other  hand,  saw  him  depart  with  a  singular 
lightening  of  mood.  What  he  seemed  to  have  achieved  might 
turn  out  to  be  the  merest  moonshine.  At  any  rate,  the  incident 
had  appeased  in  him  a  kind  of  spiritual  hunger — the  hunger  to 
escape  a  while  from  that  incessant  process  of  destructive  analysis 
with  which  the  mind  was  still  beset,  into  some  use  of  energy, 
more  positive,  human,  and  beneficent. 

The  following  day  was  one  long  trial  of  endurance  for  Elsmere 
and  for  Catherine.  She  pleaded  to  go,  promising  quietly  to 
keep  out  of  his  sight,  and  they  started  together — a  miserable 
pair. 

Crowds,  heat,  decorations,  the  grandees  on  the  platform,  and 
conspicuous  among  them  the  squire's  slouching  frame  and 
striking  head,  side  by  side  with  a  white  and  radiant  Lady 
Helen — the  outer  success,  the  inner  revolt  and  pain — and  the 
constant  seeking  of  his  truant  eyes  for  a  face  that  hid  itself  as 
much  as  possible  in  dark  corners,  but  was  in  truth  the  one 
thing  sharply  present  to  him — these  were  the  sort  of  impres- 
sions that  remained  with  Elsmere  afterwards  of  this  last  meet- 
ingwith  his  people. 

He  had  made  a  speech,  of  which  he  never  could  remember  a 
word.  As  he  sat  down,  there  had  been  a  slight  flutter  of  sur- 
prise in  the  sympathetic  looks  of  those  about  him,  as  though 
the  tone  of  it  had  been  somewhat  unexpected  and  dispropor- 
tionate to  the  occasion.  Had  he  betrayed  himself  in  any  way  1 
He  looked  for  Catherine,  but  she  was  nowhere  to  be  seen.  Only 
in  his  search  he  caught  the  squire's  ironical  glance,  and  won- 
dered with  quick  shame  what  sort  of  nonsense  he  had  been 
talking. 

Then  a  neighbouring  clergyman,  who  had  been  his  warm 
supporter  and  admirer  from  the  beginning,  sprang  up  and 
made  a  rambling  panegyric  on  him  and  on  his  work,  which 
Elsmere  writhed  under.  His  work  !  absurdity  !  What  could 
be  done  in  two  years  ?  He  saw  it  all  as  the  merest  nothing,  a 
ragged  beginning  which  might  do  more  harm  than  good. 

But  the  cheering  was  incessant,  the  popular  feeling  intense. 
There  was  old  Milsom  waving  a  feeble  arm  :  John  Allwood 
gaunt,  but  radiant ;  Mary  Sharland,  white  still  as  the  ribbons 
on  her  bonnet,  egging  on  her  flushed  and  cheering  husband: 
and  the  club  boys  grinning  and  shouting,  partly  for  love  or 
Elsmere,  mostly  because  to  the  young  human  animal  mere 
noise  is  heaven.  In  front  was  an  old  hedger  and  ditcher,  who 
came  round  the  parish  periodically,  and  never  failed  to  take 
Elsmere's  opinion  as  to  '  a  bit  of  prapperty '  he  and  two  other 


380  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  iv 

brothers  as  ancient  as  himself  had  been  quarrelling  over  for 
twenty  years,  and  were  likely  to  go  on  quarrelling  over,  till  all 
three  litigants  had  closed  their  eyes  on  a  mortal  scene  which 
had  afforded  them^  on  the  whole  vast  entertainment,  though 
little  pelf.  Next  him  was  a  bowed  and  twisted  old  tramp  who 
had  been  shepherd  in  the  district  in  his  youth,  had  then  gone 
through  the  Crimea  and  the  Mutiny,  and  was  now  living  about 
the  commons,  welcome  to  feed  here  and  sleep  there  for  the  sake 
of  his  stories  and  his  queer  innocuous  wit.  Robert  had  had 
many  a  gay  argumentative  walk  with  him,  and  he  and  his  com- 
panion had  tramped  miles  to  see  the  function,  to  rattle  their 
sticks  on  the  floor  in  Elsmere's  honour,  and  satiate  their  curious 
gaze  on  the  squire. 

When  all  was  over,  Elsmere,  with  his  wife  on  his  arm, 
mounted  the  hill  to  the  rectory,  leaving  the  green  behind 
them  still  crowded  with  folk.  Once  inside  the  shelter  of  their 
own  trees,  husband  and  wife  turned  instinctively  and  caught 
each  other's  hands.  A  low  groan  broke  from  Elsmere's  lips ; 
Catherine  looked  at  him  one  moment,  then  fell  weeping  on  his 
breast.  The  first  chapter  of  their  common  life  was  closed. 

One  thing  more,  however,  of  a  private  nature,  remained  for 
Elsmere  to  do.  Late  in  the  afternoon  he  walked  over  to  the  Hall. 

He  found  the  squire  in  the  inner  library,  among  his  German 
books,  his  pipe  in  his  mouth,  his  old  smoking  coat  and  slippers 
bearing  witness  to  the  rapidity  and  joy  with  which  he  had  shut 
the  world  out  again  after  the  futilities  of  the  morning.  His 
mood  was  more  accessible  than  Elsmere  had  yet  found  it  since 
his  return. 

'  Well,  have  you  done  with  all  those  tomfooleries,  Elsmere  1 
Precious  eloquent  speech  you  made  !  When  I  see  you  and 

feople  like  you  throwing  yourselves  at  the  heads  of  the  people, 
always  think  of  Scaliger's  remark  about  the  Basques  :  "  They 
say  they  understand  one  another — /  don't  believe  a  word  of  it  !  " 
All  that  the  lower  class  wants  to  understand,  at  any  rate,  is  the 
shortest  way  to  the  pockets  of  you  and  me ;  all  that  you  and 
I  need  understand,  according  to  me,  is  how  to  keep  'em  off! 
There  you  have  the  sum  and  substance  of  my  political  philo- 
sophy.' 

'  You  remind  me,'  said  Robert  drily,  sitting  down  on  one  of 
the  library  stools,  '  of  some  of  those  sentiments  you  expressed 
so  forcibly  on  the  first  evening  of  pur  acquaintance.' 

The  squire  received  the  shaft  with  equanimity. 

'  I  was  not  amiable,  I  remember,  on  that  occasion,'  he  said 
coolly,  his  thin,  old  man's  fingers  moving  the  while  among  the 
shelves  of  books,  '  nor  on  several  subsequent  ones.  I  had  been 
made  a  fool  of,  and  you  were  not  particularly  adroit.  But  of 
course  you  won't  acknowledge  it.  Who  ever  yet  got  a  parson 
to  confess  himself  ! ' 

'Strangely  enough,  Mr.  Wendover,'  said  Robert,  fixing  him 


CHAP,  xxx  CRISIS  381 

with  a  pair  of  deliberate  feverish  eyes, '  I  am  here  at  this  moment 
for  that  very  purpose.' 

'  Go  on,'  said  the  squire,  turning,  however,  to  meet  the  rector's 
look,  his  gold  spectacles  falling  forward  over  his  long  hooked 
nose,  his  attitude  one  of  sudden  attention.  '  Go  on.' 

All  his  grievances  against  Elsmere  returned  to  him.  He 
stood  aggressively  waiting. 

Robert  paused  a  moment,  and  then  said  abruptly — 

'  Perhaps  even  you  will  agree,  Mr.  Wendover,  that  I  had  some 
reason  for  sentiment  this  morning.  Unless  I  read  the  lessons 
to-morrow,  which  is  possible,  to-day  has  been  my  last  public 
appearance  as  rector  of  this  parish  ! ' 

The  squire  looked  at  him  dumfoundered. 

'  And  your  reasons  ? '  he  said,  with  quick  imperativeness. 

Robert  gave  them.  He  admitted,  as  plainly  and  .bluntly  as 
he  had  done  to  Grey,  the  squire's  own  part  in  the  matter ;  but 
here  a  note  of  antagonism,  almost  of  defiance,  crept  even  into 
lus  confession  of  wide  and  illimitable  defeat.  He  was  there,  so 
to  speak,  to  hand  over  his  sword.  But  to  the  squire,  his  sur- 
render had  all  the  pride  of  victory. 

'  Why  should  you  give  up  your  living  ? '  asked  the  squire 
after  several  minutes'  complete  silence. 

He  too  had  sat  down,  and  was  now  bending  forward,  his 
sharp  small  eyes  peering  at  his  companion. 

'Simply  because  I  prefer  to  feel  myself  an  honest  man. 
However,  I  have  not  acted  without  advice.  Grey  of  St.  An- 
selm's — you  know  him  of  course — was  a  very  close  personal 
friend  of  mine  at  Oxford.  I  have  been  to  see  him,  and  we 
agreed  it  was  the  only  thing  to  do.' 

'Oh,  Grey,'  exclaimed  the  squire,  with  a  movement  of  im- 
patience. 'Grey  of  course  wanted  you  to  set  up  a  church  of 
your  own,  or  to  join  his !  He  is  like  all  idealists,  he  has  the 
usual  foolish  contempt  for  the  compromise  of  institutions.' 

'  Not  at  all,'  said  Robert  calmly,  '  you  are  mistaken  •  he  has 
the  most  sacred  respect  for  institutions.  He  only  thinks  it 
well,  and  I  agree  with  him,  that  with  regard  to  a  man's  public 
profession  and  practice  he  should  recognise  that  two  and  two 
make  four.' 

It  was  clear  to  him  from  the  squire's  tone  and  manner  that 
Mr.  Wendover's  instincts  on  the  point  were  very  much  what 
he  had  expected,  the  instincts  of  the  philosophical  man  of  the 
world,  who  scorns  the  notion  of  taking  popular  beliefs  seriously, 
whether  for  protest  or  for  sympathy.  But  he  was  too  weary  to 
argue.  The  squire,  however,  rose  hastily  and  began  to  walk 
up  and  down  in  a  gathering  storm  of  irritation.  The  triumph 
gained  for  his  own  side,  the  tribute  to  his  life's  work,  were  at 
the  moment  absolutely  indifferent  to  him.  They  were  effaced 
by  something  else  much  harder  to  analyse.  Whatever  it  was, 
it  drove  him  to  throw  himself  upon  Robert's  position  with  a 
perverse  bewildering  bitterness. 


382  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  iv 

'Why  should  you  break  up  your  life  in  this  wanton  way? 
Who,  in  God's  name,  is  injured  if  you  keep  your  living  ?  It  is 
the  business  of  the  thinker  and  the  scholar  to  clear  his  mind  of 
cobwebs.  Granted.  You  have  done  it.  But  it  is  also  the  busi- 
ness of  the  practical  man  to  live  !  If  I  had  your  altruist  emo- 
tional temperament,  I  should  not  hesitate  for  a  moment.  I 
should  regard  the  historical  expressions  of  an  eternal  tendency 
in  men  as  wholly  indifferent  to  me.  If  I  understand  you  aright, 
you  have  flung  away  the  sanctions  of  orthodoxy.  There  is  no 
other  in  the  way.  Treat  words  as  they  deserve.  You ' — and  the 
speaker  laid  an  emphasis  on  the  pronoun  which  for  the  life  of 
him  he  could  not  help  making  sarcastic — '  you  will  always  have 
Gospel  enough  to  preach.' 

'  I  cannot,  Robert  repeated  quietly,  unmoved  by  the  taunt, 
if  it  was  one.  '  I  am  in  a  different  stage,  I  imagine,  from  you. 
Words — that  is  to  say,  the  specific  Christian  formulae — may  be 
indifferent  to  you,  though  a  month  or  two  ago  I  should  hardly 
have  guessed  it ;  they  are  just  now  anything  but  indifferent  to 
me.' 

The  squire's  brow  grew  darker.  He  took  up  the  argument 
again,  more  pugnaciously  than  ever.  It  was  the  strangest 
attempt  ever  made  to  gibe  and  flout  a  wandering  sheep  back 
into  the  fold.  Robert's  resentment  was  roused  at  last.  The 
squire's  temper  seemed  to  him  totally  inexplicable,  his  argu- 
ments contradictory,  the  conversation  useless  and  irritating. 
He  got  up  to  take  his  leave. 

'  What  you  are  about  to  do,  Elsmere,'  the  squire  wound  up 
with  saturnine  emphasis,  '  is  a  piece  of  cowardice !  You  will 
live  bitterly  to  regret  the  haste  and  the  unreason  of  it.' 

'  There  has  been  no  haste,'  exclaimed  Robert  in  the  low  tone 
of  passionate  emotion  ;  '  I  have  not  rooted  up  the  most  sacred 
growths  of  life  as  a  careless  child  devastates  its  garden.  There 
are  some  things  which  a  man  only  does  because  he  must.' 

There  was  a  pause.  Robert  held  out  his  hand.  The  squire 
would  hardly  touch  it.  Outwardly  his  mood  was  one  of  the 
strangest  eccentricity  and  anger ;  and  as  to  what  was  beneath 
it,  Elsmere's  quick  divination  was  dulled  by  worry  and  fatigue. 
It  only  served  him  so  far  that  at  the  door  he  turned  back,  hat 
in  hand,  and  said,  looking  lingeringly  the  while  at  the  solitary 
sombre  figure,  at  the  great  library,  with  all  its  suggestive  and 
exquisite  detail :  '  If  Monday  is  fine,  Squire,  will  you  walk  ? ' 

The  squire  made  no  reply  except  by  another  question. 

'  Do  you  still  keep  to  your  Swiss  plans  for  next  week  ? '  he 
asked  sharply. 

'Certainly.  The  plan,  as  it  happens,  is  a  Godsend.  But 
there,'  said  Robert,  with  a  sigh,  '  let  me  explain  the  details  of 
this  dismal  business  to  you  on  Monday.  I  have  hardly  the 
courage  for  it  now.' 

The  cui'tain  dropped  behind  him.  Mr.  Wendover  stood  a 
minute  looking  after  him  ;  then,  with  some  vehement  expletive 


CHAP,  xxx  CRISIS  383 

or  other,  walked  up  to  his  writing-table,  drew  some  folios  that 
were  lying  on  it  towards  him,  with  hasty  maladroit  movements 
which  sent  his  papers  flying  over  the  floor,  and  plunged  doggedly 
into  work. 

He  and  Mrs.  Darcy  dined  alone.  After  dinner  the  squire 
leant  against  the  mantelpiece  sipping  his  coffee,  more  gloomily 
silent  than  even  his  sister  had  seen  him  for  weeks.  And,  as 
always  happened  when  he  became  more  difficult  and  morose,  she 
became  more  childish.  She  was  now  wholly  absorbed  with  a 
little  electric  toy  she  had  just  bought  for  Mary  Elsmere,  a 
number  of  infinitesimal  little  figures  dancing  fantastically 
under  the  stimulus  of  an  electric  current,  generated  by  the 
simplest  means.  She  hung  over  it  absorbed,  calling  to  her 
brother  every  now  and  then,  as  though  by  sheer  perversity,  to 
come  and  look  whenever  the  pink  or  the  blue  danseuse  executed 
a  more  surprising  somersault  than  usual. 

He  took  not  the  smallest  spoken  notice  of  her,  though  his 
eyes  followed  her  contemptuously  as  she  moved  from  window  to 
window  with  her  toy  in  pursuit  of  the  fading  light. 

'  Oh,  Roger,'  she  called  presently,  still  throwing  herself  to  this 
side  and  that,  to  catch  new  views  of  her  pith  puppets,  '  I  have 
got  something  to  show  you.  You  must  admire  them — you  shall ! 
I  have  been  drawing  them  all  day,  and  they  are  nearly  done. 
You  remember  what  I  told  you  once  about  my  "  imps  "?  I  have 
seen  them  all  my  life,  since  I  was  a  child  in  France  with  papa, 
and  I  have  never  been  able  to  draw  them  till  the  last  few  weeks. 
They  are  such  dears — such  darlings  ;  every  one  will  know  them 
when  he  sees  them  !  There  is  the  Chinese  imp,  the  low  smirk- 
ing creature,  you  know,  that  sits  on  the  edge  of  your  cup  of  tea ; 
there  is  the  flipperty-flopperty  creature  that  flies  out  at  you 
when  you  open  a  drawer ;  there  is  the  twisty-twirly  person  that 
sits  jeering  on  the  edge  of  your  hat  when  it  blows  away  from 
you  ;  and ' — her  voice  dropped — '  that  ugly,  ugly  thing  I  always 
see  waiting  for  me  on  the  top  of  a  gate.  They  have  teased  me 
all  my  life,  and  now  at  last  I  have  drawn  them.  If  they  were 
to  take  offence  to-morrow  I  should  have  them — the  beauties — 
all  safe.' 

She  came  towards  him,  her  bizarre  little  figure  swaying  from 
side  to  side,  her  eyes  glittering,  her  restless  hands  pulling  at  the 
lace  round  her  blanched  head  and  face.  The  squire,  his  hands 
behind  him,  looked  at  her  frowning,  an  involuntary  horror 
dawning  on  his  dark  countenance,  turned  abruptly,  and  left  the 
room. 

Mr.  Wendover  worked  till  midnight ;  then,  tired  out,  he 
turned  to  the  bit  of  fire  to  which,  in  spite  of  the  oppressiveness 
of  the  weather,  the  chilliness  of  age  and  nervous  strain  had  led 
him  to  set  a  light.  He  sat  there  for  long,  sunk  in  the  blackest 
reverie.  He  was  the  only  living  creature  in  the  great  library 


384  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  iv 

wing  which  spread  around  and  above  him — the  only  waking 
creature  in  the  whole  vast  pile  of  Murewell.  The  silver  lamps 
shone  with  a  steady  melancholy  light  on  the  chequered  walls  of 
books.  The  silence  was  a  silence  that  could  be  felt ;  and  the 
gleaming  Artemis,  the  tortured  frowning  Medusa,  were  hardly 
stiller  in  their  frozen  calm  than  the  crouching  figure  of  the 
squire. 

So  Elsmere  was  going  !  In  a  few  weeks  the  rectory  would 
be  once  more  tenanted  by  one  of  those  nonentities  the  squire 
had  either  patronised  or  scorned  all  his  life.  The  park,  the  lanes, 
the  room  in  which  he  sits,  will  know  that  spare  young  figure, 
that  animated  voice,  no  more.  The  outlet  which  had  brought 
so  much  relief  and  stimulus  to  his  own  mental  powers  is  closed ; 
the  friendship  on  which  he  had  unconsciously  come  to  depend 
so  much  is  broken  before  it  had  well  begun. 

All  sorts  of  strange  thwarted  instincts  make  themselves  felt 
in  the  squire.  The  wife  he  had  once  thought  to  marry,  the 
children  he  might  have  had,  come  to  sit  like  ghosts  with  him 
beside  the  fire.  He  had  never,  like  Augustine,  '  loved  to  love ' ; 
he  had  only  loved  to  know.  But  none  of  us  escapes  to  the  last 
the  yearnings  which  make  us  men.  The  squire  becomes  con- 
scious that  certain  fibres  he  had  thought  long  since  dead  in  him 
had  been  all  the  while  twining  themselves  silently  round  the 
disciple  who  had  shown  him  in  many  respects  such  a  filial  con- 
sideration and  confidence.  That  young  man  might  have  become 
to  him  the  son  of  his  old  age,  the  one  human  being  from  whom, 
as  weakness  of  mind  and  body  break  him  down,  even  his  in- 
domitable spirit  might  have  accepted  the  sweetness  of  human 
pity,  the  comfort  of  human  help. 

And  it  is  his  own  hand  which  has  done  most  to  break  the 
nascent  slowly-forming  tie.  He  has  bereft  himself. 

With  what  incredible  recklessness  had  he  been  acting  all  these 
months ! 

It  was  the  levity  of  his  own  proceeding  which  stared  him  in 
the  face.  His  rough  hand  had  closed  on  the  delicate  wings  of  a 
soul  as  a  boy  crushes  the  butterfly  he  pursues.  As  Elsmere  had 
stood  looking  back  at  him  from  the  library  door,  the  suffering 
which  spoke  in  every  line  of  that  changed  face  had  stirred  a 
sudden  troubled  remorse  in  Roger  Wendover.  It  was  mere 
justice  that  one  result  of  that  suffering  should  be  to  leave  him- 
self forlorn. 

He  had  been  thinking  and  writing  of  religion,  of  the  history 
of  ideas,  all  his  life.  Had  he  ever  yet  grasped  the  meaning  of 
religion  to  the  religious  man  ?  God  and  faith — what  have  these 
venerable  ideas  ever  mattered  to  him  personally,  except  as  the 
subjects  of  the  most  ingenious  analysis,  the  most  delicate  his- 
torical inductions  1  Not  only  sceptical  to  the  core,  but  consti- 
tutionally indifferent,  the  squire  had  always  found  enough  to 
make  life  amply  worth  living  in  the  mere  dissection  of  other 
men's  beliefs. 


CHAP,  xxx  CRISIS  385 

But  to-night !  The  unexpected  shock  of  feeling,  mingled  with 
the  terrible  sense,  periodically  alive  in  him,  of  physical  doom, 
seems  to  have  stripped  from  the  thorny  soul  its  outer  defences 
of  mental  habit.  He  sees  once  more  the  hideous  spectacle  of  his 
father's  death,  his  own  black  half -remembered  moments  of  warn- 
ing, the  teasing  horror  of  his  sister's  increasing  weakness  of 
brain.  Life  has  been  on  the  whole  a  burden,  though  there  has 
been  a  certain  joy  no  doubt  in  the  fierce  intellectual  struggle  of 
it.  And  to-night  it  seems  so  nearly  over  !  A  cold  prescience  of 
death  creeps  over  the  squire  as  he  sits  in  the  lamplit  silence. 
His  eye  seems  to  be  actually  penetrating  the  eternal  vastness 
which  lies  about  our  life.  He  feels  himself  old,  feeble,  alone. 
The  awe,  the  terror  which  are  at  the  root  of  all  religions  have 
fallen  even  upon  him  at  last. 

The  fire  burns  lower,  the  night  wears  on  ;  outside,  an  airless, 
misty  moonlight  lies  over  park  and  field.  Hark  !  was  that  a 
sound  upstairs,  in  one  of  those  silent  empty  rooms  ? 

The  squire  half  rises,  one  hand  on  his  chair,  his  blanched  face 
strained,  listening.  Again  !  Is  it  a  footstep  or  simply  a  delu- 
sion of  the  ear  ?  He  rises,  pushes  aside  the  curtains  into  the 
inner  library,  where  the  lamps  have  almost  burnt  away,  creeps 
up  the  wooden  stair,  and  into  the  deserted  upper  story. 

Why  was  that  door  into  the  end  room — his  father's  room — 
open  ?  He  had  seen  it  closed  that  afternoon.  No  one  had  been 
there  since.  He  stepped  nearer.  Was  that  simply  a  gleam  of 
moonlight  on  the  polished  floor — confused  lines  of  shadow 
thrown  by  the  vine  outside  ?  And  was  that  sound  nothing  but 
the  stirring  of  the  rising  wind  of  dawn  against  the  open  case- 
ment window  1  Or 

'  My  God!' 

The  squire  fled  downstairs.  He  gained  his  chair  again.  He 
sat  upright  an  instant,  impressing  on  himself,  with  sardonic 
vindictive  force,  some  of  those  truisms  as  to  the  action  of  mind 
on  body,  of  brain-process  on  sensation,  which  it  had  been  part 
of  his  life's  work  to  illustrate.  The  philosopher  had  time  to 
realise  a  shuddering  fellowship  of  weakness  with  his  kind,  to 
see  himself  as  a  helpless  instance  of  an  inexorable  law,  beforo 
he  fell  back  in  his  chair ;  a  swoon,  born  of  pitiful  human  terror 
— terror  of  things  unseen—  creeping  over  heart  and  brain. 


2C 


BOOK  V 

EOSE 


CHAPTEE  XXXI 

IT  was  a  November  afternoon.  London  lay  wrapped  in  rainy 
fog.  The  atmosphere  was  such  as  only  a  Londoner  can  breathe 
with  equanimity,  and  the  gloom  was  indescribable. 

Meanwhile,  in  defiance  of  the  Inferno  outside,  festal  prepara- 
tions were  being  made  in  a  little  house  on  Campden  Hill. 
Lamps  were  lit ;  in  the  drawing-room  chairs  were  pushed  back ; 
the  piano  was  open,  and  a  violin  stand  towered  beside  it ;  chry- 
santhemums were  everywhere  ;  an  invalid  lady  in  a  '  best  cap ' 
occupied  the  sofa ;  and  two  girls  were  flitting  about,  clearly 
making  the  last  arrangements  necessary  for  a  '  musical  after- 
noon.' 

The  invalid  was  Mrs.  Leyburn,  the  girls,  of  course,  Rose  and 
Agnes.  Rose  at  last  was  safely  settled  in  her  longed-for  London, 
and  an  artistic  company,  of  the  sort  her  soul  loved,  was  coming 
to  tea  with  her. 

Of  Rose's  summer  at  Burwood  very  little  need  be  said.  She 
was  conscious  that  she  had  not  borne  it  very  well.  She  had 
been  off-hand  with  Mrs.  Thornburgh,  and  had  enjoyed  one  or 
two  open  skirmishes  with  Mrs.  Seaton.  Her  whole  temper  had 
been  irritating  and  irritable — she  was  perfectly  aware  of  it. 
Towards  her  sick  mother,  indeed,  she  had  controlled  herself ; 
nor,  for  such  a  restless  creature,  had  she  made  a  bad  nurse. 
But  Agnes  had  endured  much,  and  found  it  all  the  harder  be- 
cause she  was  so  totally  in  the  dark  as  to  the  whys  and  where- 
fores of  her  sister's  moods. 

Rose  herself  would  have  scornfully  denied  that  any  whys  and 
wherefores — beyond  her  rooted  dislike  of  Whindale — existed. 
Since  her  return  from  Berlin,  and  especially  since  that  moment 
when,  as  she  was  certain,  Mr.  Langham  had  avoided  her  and 
Catherine  at  the  National  Gallery,  she  had  been  calmly  certain 
of  her  own  heart-wholeness.  Berlin  had  developed  her  pre- 
cisely as  she  had  desired  that  it  might.  The  necessities  of  the 
Bohemian  student's  life  had  trained  her  to  a  new  independence 
and  shrewdness,  and  in  her  own  opinion  she  was  now  a  woman 
of  the  world  judging  all  things  by  pure  reason. 

Oh,  of  course,  she  understood  him  perfectly.  In  the  first 
place,  at  the  time  of  their  first  meeting  she  had  been  a  mere 


390  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  V 

bread-and-butter  miss,  the  easiest  of  preys  for  any  one  who 
might  wish  to  get  a  few  hours'  amusement  and  distraction  out 
of  her  temper  and  caprices.  In  the  next  place,  even  supposing 
he  had  been  ever  inclined  to  fall  in  love  with  her,  which  her 
new  sardonic  fairness  of  mind  obliged  her  to  regard  as  entirely 
doubtful,  he  was  a  man  to  whom  marriage  was  impossible. 
How  could  any  one  expect  such  a  superfine  dreamer  to  turn 
bread-winner  for  a  wife  and  household  ?  Imagine  Mr.  Langham 
interviewed  by  a  rate-collector  or  troubled  about  coals  !  As  to 
her — simply — she  had  misunderstood  the  laws  of  the  game.  It 
was  a  little  bitter  to  have  to  confess  it ;  a  little  bitter  that  he 
should  have  seen  it,  and  have  felt  reluctantly  compelled  to  re- 
call the  facts  to  her.  But,  after  all,  most  girls  have  some  young 
follies  to  blush  over. 

So  far  the  little  cynic  would  get,  becoming  rather  more 
scarlet,  however,  over  the  process  of  reflection  than  was  quite 
compatible  with  the  ostentatious  worldly  wisdom  of  it.  Then 
a  sudden  inward  restlessness  would  break  through,  and  she 
would  spend  a  passionate  hour  pacing  up  and  down,  and  hun- 
gering for  the  moment  when  she  might  avenge  upon  herself  and 
him  the  week  of  silly  friendship  he  had  found  it  necessary  as 
her  elder  and  monitor  to  cut  short ! 

In  September  came  the  news  of  Robert's  resignation  of  his 
living.  Mother  and  daughters  sat  looking  at  each  other  over 
the  letter,  stupefied.  That  this  calamity,  of  all  others,  should 
have  fallen  on  Catherine,  of  all  women  !  Rose  said  very  little, 
and  presently  jumped  up  with  shining  excited  eyes,  and  ran 
out  for  a  walk  with  Bob,  leaving  Agnes  to  console  their  tearful 
and  agitated  mother.  When  she  came  in  she  went  singing 
about  the  house  as  usual.  Agnes,  who  was  moved  by  the  news 
out  of  all  her  ordinary  sangfroid,  was  outraged  by  what  seemed 
to  her  Rose's  callousness.  She  wrote  a  letter  to  Catherine, 
which  Catherine  put  among  her  treasures,  so  strangely  unlike 
it  was  to  the  quiet  indifferent  Agnes  of  every  day.  Rose  spent 
a  morning  over  an  attempt  at  a  letter,  which  when  it  reached 
its  destination  only  wounded  Catherine  by  its  constraint  and 
convention. 

And  yet  that  same  night  when  the  child  was  alone,  suddenly 
some  phrase  of  Catherine's  letter  recurred  to  her.  She  saw,  as 
only  imaginative  people  see,  with  every  detail  visualised,  her 
sister's  suffering,  her  sister's  struggle  that  was  to  be.  She 
jumped  into  bed,  and,  stifling  all  sounds  under  the  clothes, 
cried  herself  to  sleep,  which  did  not  prevent  her  next  morning 
from  harbouring  somewhere  at  the  bottom  of  her,  a  wicked  and 
furtive  satisfaction  that  Catherine  might  now  learn  there  were 
more  opinions  in  the  world  than  one. 

As  for  the  rest  of  the  valley,  Mrs.  Leyburn  soon  passed 
from  bewailing  to  a  plaintive  indignation  with  Robert,  which 
was  a  relief  to  her  daughters.  It  seemed  to  her  a  reflection 
on  'Richard'  that  Robert  should  have  behaved  so.  Church 


CHAP,  xxxi  ROSE  391 

opinions  had  been  good  enough  for  '  Richard.'  '  The  young  men 
seem  to  think,  my  dears,  their  fathers  were  all  fools  ! ' 

The  vicar,  good  man,  was  sincerely  distressed,  but  sincerely 
confident,  also,  that  in  time  Elsmere  would  find  his  way  back 
into  the  fold.  In  Mrs.  Thornburgh's  dismay  there  was  a  secret 
superstitious  pang.  Perhaps  she  had  better  not  have  meddled. 
Perhaps  it  was  never  well  to  meddle.  One  event  bears  many 
readings,  and  the  tragedy  of  Catherine  Elsmere's  life  took  shape 
in  the  uneasy  consciousness  of  the  vicar's  spouse  as  a  more  or 
less  sharp  admonition  against  wilfulness  in  match-making. 

Of  course  Rose  had  her  way  as  to  wintering  in  London. 
They  came  up  in  the  middle  of  October  while  the  Elsmeres 
were  still  abroad,  and  settled  into  a  small  house  in  Lerwick 
Gardens,  Campden  Hill,  which  Catherine  had  secured  for  them 
on  her  way  tli  rough  town  to  the  Continent. 

As  soon  as  Mrs.  Leyburn  had  been  made  comfortable,  Rose 
set  to  work  to  look  up  her  friends.  She  owed  her  acquaintance 
in  London  hitherto  mainly  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Pierson,  the  young 
barrister  and  his  aesthetic  wife  whom  she  had  originally  met 
and  made  friends  with  in  a  railway-carriage.  Mr.  Pierson  was 
bustling  and  shrewd  ;  not  made  of  the  finest  clay,  yet  not  at  all 
a  bad  fellow.  His  wife,  the  daughter  of  a  famous  Mrs.  Leo 
Hunter  of  a  bygone  generation,  was  small,  untidy,  and  in  all 
matters  of  religious  or  political  opinion  'emancipated'  to  an 
extreme.  She  had  also  a  strong  vein  of  inherited  social  ambi- 
tion, and  she  and  her  husband  welcomed  Rose  with  greater 
effusion  than  ever,  in  proportion  as  she  was  more  beautiful  and 
more  indisputably  gifted  than  ever.  They  placed  themselves 
and  their  house  at  the  girl's  service,  partly  out  of  genuine 
admiration  and  good-nature,  partly  also  because  they  divined 
in  her  a  profitable  social  appendage. 

For  the  Piersons,  socially,  were  still  climbing,  and  had  by 
no  means  attained.  Their  world,  so  far,  consisted  too  much  of 
the  odds  and  ends  of  most  other  worlds.  They  were  not  satis- 
fied with  it,  and  the  friendship  of  the  girl -violinist,  whose 
vivacious  beauty  and  artistic  gift  made  a  stir  wherever  she 
went,  was  a  very  welcome  addition  to  their  resources.  They 
feted  her  in  their  own  house ;  they  took  her  to  the  houses  of 
other  people ;  society  smiled  on  Miss  Leyburn's  protectors  more 
than  it  had  ever  smiled  on  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Pierson  taken  alone ; 
and  meanwhile  Rose,  flushed,  excited,  and  totally  unsuspicious, 
thought  the  world  a  fairy  tale,  and  lived  from  morning  till 
night  in  a  perpetual  din  of  music,  compliments,  and  bravos, 
which  seemed  to  her  life  indeed — life  at  last ! 

With  the  beginning  of  November  the  Elsmeres  returned,  and 
about  the  same  time  Rose  began  to  project  tea-parties  of  her 
own,  to  which  Mrs.  Leyburn  gave  a  flurried  assent.  When  the 
invitations  were  written,  Rose  sat  staring  at  them  a  little,  pen 
in  hand. 

'  i  wonder  what  Catherine  will  say  to  some  of  these  people  ! ' 


392  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

she  remarked  in  a  dubious  voice  to  Agnes.  '  Some  of  them  are 
queer,  I  admit ;  but,  after  all,  those  two  superior  persons  will 
have  to  get  used  to  my  friends  some  time,  and  they  may  as  well 
begin.' 

'You  cannot  expect  poor  Cathie  to  come,'  said  Agnes  with 
sudden  energy. 

Rose's  eyebrows  went  up.  Agnes  resented  her  ironical  ex- 
pression, and  with  a  word  or  two  of  quite  unusual  sharpness 
got  up  and  went. 

Rose,  left  alone,  sprang  up  suddenly,  and  clasped  her  white 
fingers  above  her  head,  with  a  long  breath. 

'  Where  my  heart  used  to  be  there  is  now  just—a  black — 
cold — cinder,'  she  remarked  with  sarcastic  emphasis.  'I  am 
sure  I  used  to  be  a  nice  girl  once,  but  it  is  so  long  ago  I  can't 
remember  it ! ' 

She  stayed  so  a  minute  or  more ;  then  two  tears  suddenly 
broke  and  fell.  She  dashed  them  angrily  away,  and  sat  down 
again  to  her  note-writing. 

Amongst  the  cards  she  had  still  to  fill  up  was  one  of  which 
the  envelope  was  addressed  to  the  Hon.  Hugh  Flaxman,  90  St. 
James's  Place.  Lady  Charlotte,  though  she  had  afterwards  again 
left  to'wn,  had  been  in  Martin  Street  at  the  end  of  October. 
The  Leyburns  had  lunched  there,  and  had  been  introduced  by 
her  to  her  nephew,  and  Lady  Helen's  brother,  Mr.  Flaxman. 
The  girls  had  found  him  agreeable ;  he  had  called  the  week 
afterwards  when  they  were  not  at  home ;  and  Rose  now  care- 
lessly sent  him  a  card,  with  the  inward  reflection  that  he  was 
much  too  great  a  man  to  come,  and  was  probably  enjoying  him- 
self at  country  houses,  as  every  aristocrat  should,  in  November. 

The  following  day  the  two  girls  made  their  way  over  to 
Bedford  Square,  where  the  Elsmeres  had  taken  a  house  in  order 
to  be  near  the  British  Museum.  They  pushed  their  way  upstairs 
through  a  medley  of  packing-cases,  and  a  sickening  smell  of 
paint.  There  was  a  sound  of  an  opening  door,  and  a  gentleman 
stepped  out  of  the  back  room,  which  was  to  be  Elsmere's  study, 
on  to  the  landing. 

It  was  Edward  Langham.  He  and  Rose  stood  and  stared  at 
each  other  a  moment.  Then  Rose  in  the  coolest,  lightest  voice 
introduced  him  to  Agnes.  Agnes,  with  one  curious  glance, 
took  in  her  sister's  defiant  smiling  ease  and  the  stranger's 
embarrassment ;  then  she  went  on  to  find  Catherine.  The  two 
left  behind  exchanged  a  few  banal  questions  and  answers. 
Langham  had  only  allowed  himself  one  look  at  the  dazzling 
face  and  eyes  framed  in  fur  cap  and  boa.  Afterwards  he  stood 
making  a  study  of  the  ground,  and  answering  her  remarks  in 
his  usual  stumbling  fashion.  What  was  it  had  gone  out  of  her 
voice — simply  the  soft  callow  sounds  of  first  youth  ?  And  what 
a  personage  she  had  grown  in  these  twelve  months— how  for- 
midably, consciously  brilliant  in  look  and  dress  and  manner  ! 

Yes,  he  was  still  in  town — settled  there,  indeed,  for  some 


CHAP,  xxxi  ROSE  393 

time.  And  she — was  there  any  special  day  on  which  Mrs.  Ley- 
burn  received  visitors  ?  He  asked  the  question,  of  course,  with 
various  hesitations  and  circumlocutions. 

'  Oh  dear,  yes  !  Will  you  come  next  Wednesday,  for  instance, 
and  inspect  a  musical  menagerie  ?  The  animals  will  go  through 
their  performances  from  four  till  seven.  And  I  can  answer  for 
it  that  some  of  the  specimens  will  be  entirely  new  to  you.' 

The  prospect  offered  could  hardly  have  been  more  repellent 
to  him,  but  he  got  out  an  acceptance  somehow.  She  nodded 
lightly  to  him  and  passed  on,  and  he  went  downstairs,  his  head 
in  a  whirl.  Where  .had  the  crude  pretty  child  of  yester-year 
departed  to — impulsive,  conceited,  readily  offended,  easily 
touched,  sensitive  as  to  what  all  the  world  might  think  of  her 
and  her  performances  ?  The  girl  he  had  just  left  had  counted 
all  her  resources,  tried  the  edge  of  all  her  weapons,  and  knew 
her  own  place  too  well  to  ask  for  anybody  else's  appraisement. 
What  beauty — good  heavens  ! — what  aplomb  !  The  rich  husband 
Elsmere  talked  of  would  hardly  take  much  waiting  for. 

So  cogitating,  Langham  took  his  way  westward  to  his 
Beaumont  Street  rooms.  They  were  on  the  second  floor,  small, 
dingy,  choked  with  books.  Ordinarily  he  shut  the  door  behind 
him  with  a  sigh  of  content.  This  evening  they  seemed  to  him 
intolerably  confined  and  stuffy.  He  thought  of  going  out  to  his 
club  and  a  concert,  but  did  nothing,  after  all,  but  sit  brooding 
over  the  fire  till  midnight,  alternately  hugging  and  hating  his 
solitude. 

And  so  we  return  to  the  Wednesday  following  this  unex- 
pected meeting. 

The  drawing-room  at  No.  27  was  beginning  to  fill.  Rose 
stood  at  the  door  receiving  the  guests  as  they  flowed  in,  while 
Agnes  in  the  background  dispensed  tea.  She  was  discussing 
with  herself  the  probability  of  Langham 's  appearance  '  Whom 
shall  I  introduce  him  to  first  ? '  she  pondered,  while  she  shook 
hands.  '  The  poet  1  I  see  mamma  is  now  struggling  with  him. 
The  'cellist  with  the  hair — or  the  lady  in  Greek  dress — or  the 
esoteric  Buddhist  1  What  a  fascinating  selection  !  I  had  really 
no  notion  we  should  be  quite  so  curious  ! ' 

'Mees  Rose,  they  vait  for  you,'  said  a  charming  golden- 
bearded  young  German,  viola  in  hand,  bowing  before  her.  He 
and  his  kind  were  most  of  them  in  love  with  her  already,  and 
all  the  more  so  because  she  knew  so  well  how  to  keep  them  at  a 
distance. 

She  went  off,  beckoning  to  Agnes  to  take  her  place,  and  the 
quartette  began.  The  young  German  aforesaid  played  the  viola, 
while  the  'cello  was  divinely  played  by  a  Hungarian,  of  whose 
outer  man  it  need  only  be  said  that  in  wild  profusion  of  much- 
tortured  hair,  in  Hebraism  of  feature,  and  swarthy  smoothness 
of  cheek,  he  belonged  to  that  type  which  Nature  would  seem  to 
have  already  used  to  excess  in  the  production  of  the  continental 


394  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

musician.  Rose  herself  was  violinist,  and  the  instruments 
dashed  into  the  opening  allegro  with  a  precision  and  an  entrain 
that  took  the  room  by  storm. 

In  the  middle  of  it,  Langham  pushed  his  way  into  the  crowd 
round  the  drawing-room  door.  Through  the  heads  about  him, 
he  could  see  her  standing  a  little  in  advance  of  the  others,  her 
head  turned  to  one  side,  really  in  the  natural  attitude  of  violin- 
playing,  but,  as  it  seemed  to  him,  in  a  kind  of  ravishment  of 
listening — cheeks  flushed,  eyes  shining,  and  the  right  arm  and 
high-curved  wrist  managing  the  bow  with  a  grace  born  of  know- 
ledge and  fine  training. 

'  Very  much  improved,  eh  ? '  said  an  English  professional  to  a 
German  neighbour,  lifting  his  eyebrows  interrogatively. 

The  other  nodded  with  the  business-like  air  of  one  who  knows. 
'Joachim,  they  say,  war  daruber  entzuckt,  and  did  his  best  vid 

her,  and  now  D has  got  her ' —  naming  a  famous  violinist — 

'she  vill  make  fast  brogress.  He  vill  schtamp  upon  her 
treecks ! ' 

'  But  will  she  ever  be  more  than  a  very  clever  amateur  ?  Too 
pretty,  eh  ? '  And  the  questioner  nudged  his  companion, 
dropping  his  voice. 

Langham  would  have  given  worlds  to  get  on  into  the  room, 
over  the  prostrate  body  of  the  speaker  by  preference,  but  the 
laws  of  mass  and  weight  had  him  at  their  mercy,  and  he  was 
rooted  to  the  spot. 

The  other  shrugged  his  shoulders.  '  Veil,  vid  a  bretty  woman 
—iiberhaupt — it  dosn't  mean  business  !  It's  zoziety — the  dukes 
and  the  duchesses— that  ruins  all  the  yong  talents.' 

This  whispered  conversation  went  on  during  the  andante. 
With  the  scherzo  the  two  hirsute  faces  broke  into  broad  smiles. 
The  artist  behind  each  woke  up,  and  Langham  heard  no  more, 
except  guttural  sounds  of  delight  and  quick  notes  of  technical 
criticism. 

How  that  Scherzo  danced  and  coquetted,  and  how  the  Presto 
flew  as  though  all  the  winds  were  behind  it,  chasing  its  mad 
eddies  of  notes  through  listening  space !  At  the  end,  amid  a 
wild  storm  of  applause,  she  laid  down  her  violin,  and,  proudly 
smiling,  her  breast  still  heaving  with  excitement  and  exertion, 
received  the  praises  of  those  crowding  round  her.  The  group 
round  the  door  was  precipitated  forward,  and  Langham  with  it. 
She  saw  him  in  a  moment.  Her  white  brow  contracted,  and 
she  gave  him  a  quick  but  hardly  smiling  glance  of  recognition 
through  the  crowd.  He  thought  there  was  no  chance  of  getting 
at  her,  and  moved  aside  amid  the  general  hubbub  to  look  at  a 
picture. 

'Mr.  Langham,  how  do  you  do ?' 

He  turned  sharply  and  found  her  beside  him.  She  had  come 
to  him  with  malice  in  her  heart — malice  born  of  smart  and  long 
smouldering  pain  ;  but  as  she  caught  his  look,  the  look  of  the 
nervous  short-sighted  scholar  and  recluse,  as  her  glance  swept 


CHAP,  xxxi  ROSE  395 

over  the  delicate  refinement  of  the  face,  a  sudden  softness 
quivered  in  her  own.  The  game  was  so  defenceless  ! 

'  You  will  find  nobody  here  you  know,'  she  said  abruptly,  a 
little  under  her  breath.  '  I  am  morally  certain  you  never  saw 
a  single  person  in  the  room  before  !  Shall  I  introduce  you  ? ' 

'  Delighted,  of  course.  But  don't  disturb  yourself  about  me, 
Miss  Leyburn.  I  come  out  of  my  hole  so  seldom,  everything 
amuses  me — but  especially  looking  and  listening.' 

'  Which  means,'  she  said,  with  frank  audacity,  '  that  you  dis- 
like new  people ! ' 

His  eye  kindled  at  once.  '  Say  rather  that  it  means  a  prefer- 
ence for  the  people  that  are  not  new !  There  is  such  a  thing 
as  concentrating  one's  attention.  I  came  to  hear  you  play,  Miss 
Leyburn  ! ' 

'Well?' 

She  glanced  at  him  from  under  her  long  lashes,  one  hand 
playing  with  the  rings  on  the  other.  He  thought,  suddenly, 
with  a  sting  of  regret,  of  the  confiding  child  who  had  flushed 
under  his  praise  that  Sunday  evening  at  Murewell. 

'  Superb  ! '  he  said,  but  half -mechanically.  '  I  had  no  notion 
a  winter's  work  would  have  done  so  much  for  you.  Was  Berlin 
as  stimulating  as  you  expected  ?  When  I  heard  you  had  gone, 
I  said  to  myself — "  Well,  at  least,  now,  there  is  one  completely 
happy  person  in  Europe  ! " ' 

'  Did  you  ?  How  easily  we  all  dogmatise  about  each  other  1 ' 
she  said  scornfully.  Her  manner  was  by  no  means  simple.  He 
did  not  feel  himself  at  all  at  ease  with  her.  His  very  embarrass- 
ment, however,  drove  him  into  rashness,  as  often  happens. 

'  I  thought  I  had  enough  to  go  upon ! '  he  said  in  another 
tone ;  and  his  black  eyes,  sparkling  as  though  a  film  had 
dropped  from  them,  supplied  the  reference  his  words  forbore. 

She  turned  away  from  him  with  a  perceptible  drawing  up  of 
the  whole  figure. 

'Will  you  come  and  be  introduced?'  she  asked  him  coldly. 
He  bowed  as  coldly  and  followed  her.  Wholesome  resentment 
of  her  manner  was  denied  him.  He  Jiad  asked  for  her  friend- 
ship, and  had  then  gone  away  and  forgotten  her.  Clearly  what 
she  meant  him  to  see  now  was  that  they  were  strangers  again. 
Well,  she  was  amply  in  her  right.  He  suspected  that  his 
allusion  to  their  first  talk  over  the  fire  had  not  been  unwelcome 
to  her,  as  an  opportunity. 

And  he  had  actually  debated  whether  he  should  come,  lest  in 
spite  of  himself  she  might  beguile  him  once  more  into  those  old 
lapses  of  will  and  common  sense  !  Coxcomb  ! 

He  made  a  few  spasmodic  efforts  at  conversation  with  the 
lady  to  whom  she  had  introduced  him,  then  awkwardly  dis- 
n milled  himself  and  went  to  stand  in  a  corner  and  study  his 
neighbours. 

Close  to  him,  he  found,  was  the  poet  of  the  party,  got  up  in 
the  most  correct  professional  costume — long  hair,  velvet  coat, 


396  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

eyeglass  and  all.  His  extravagance,  however,  was  of  the  most 
conventional  type.  Only  his  vanity  had  a  touch  of  the  sublime. 
Langham,  who  possessed  a  sort  of  fine-ear  gift  for  catching 
conversation,  heard  him  saying  to  an  open-eyed  ingenue  beside 
him, — 

'  Oh,  my  literary  baggage  is  small  as  yet.  I  have  only  done, 
perhaps,  three  things  that  will  live.' 

'  Oh,  Mr.  Wood  ! '  said  the  maiden,  mildly  protesting  against 
so  much  modesty. 

He  smiled,  thrusting  his  hand  into  the  breast  of  the  velvet 
coat.  '  But  then,'  he  said,  in  a  tone  of  the  purest  candour,  '  at 
my  age  I  don't  think  Shelley  had  done  more  ! ' 

Langham,  who,  like  all  shy  men,  was  liable  to  occasional 
explosions,  was  seized  with  a  convulsive  fit  of  coughing,  and 
had  to  retire  from  the  neighbourhood  of  the  bard,  who  looked 
round  him,  disturbed  and  slightly  frowning. 

At  last  he  discovered  a  point  of  view  in  the  back  room 
whence  he  could  watch  the  humours  of  the  crowd  without 
coming  too  closely  in  contact  with  them.  What  a  miscellaneous 
collection  it  was  !  He  began  to  be  irritably  jealous  for  Rose's 
place  in  the  world.  She  ought  to  be  more  adequately  sur- 
rounded than  this.  What  was  Mrs.  Leyburn — what  were  the 
Elsmeres  about  1  He  rebelled  against  the  thought  of  her  living 
perpetually  among  her  inferiors,  the  centre  of  a  vulgar  publicity, 
queen  of  the  second-rate. 

It  provoked  him  that  she  should  be  amusing  herself  so  well. 
Her  laughter,  every  now  and  then,  came  ringing  into  the  back 
room.  And  presently  there  was  a  general  hubbub.  .  Langham 
craned  his  neck  forward,  and  saw  a  struggle  going  on  over  a 
roll  of  music,  between  Rose  and  the  long-haired,  long-nosed 
violoncellist.  Evidently  she  did  not  want  to  play  some 
particular  piece,  and  wished  to  put  it  out  of  sight.  Whereupon 
the  Hungarian,  who  had  been  clamouring  for  it,  rushed  to  its 
rescue,  and  there  was  a  mock  fight  over  it.  At  last,  amid  the 
applause  of  the  room,  Rose  was  beaten,  and  her  conqueror, 
flourishing  the  music  on  high,  executed  a  kind  of  pas  seul  of 
triumph. 

'  Victoria  ! '  he  cried.  '  Now  denn  for  de  conditions  of  peace. 
Mees  Rose,  vill  you  kindly  tune  up  ?  You  are  as  moch  beaten 
as  the  French  at  Sedan.' 

'  Not  a  stone  of  my  fortresses,  not  an  inch  of  my  territory  ! ' 
said  Rose,  with  fine  emphasis,  crossing  her  white  wrists  before 
her. 

The  Hungarian  looked  at  her,  the  wild  poetic  strain  in  him 
which  was  the  strain  of  race  asserting  itself. 

'  But  if  de  victor  bows,'  he  said,  dropping  on  one  knee  before 
her.  '  If  force  lay  down  his  spoils  at  de  feet  of  beauty  ? ' 

The  circle  round  them  applauded  hotly,  the  touch  of 
theatricality  finding  immediate  response.  Langham  was 
remorselessly  conscious  of  the  man's  absurd  chevelure  and  ill- 


CHAP,  xxxi  ROSE  397 

fitting  clothes.  But  Rose  herself  had  evidently  nothing  but 
relish  for  the  scene.  Proudly  smiling,  she  held  out  her  hand  for 
her  property,  and  as  soon  as  she  had  it  safe,  she  whisked  it  into 
the  open  drawer  of  a  cabinet  standing  near,  and  drawing  out 
the  key,  held  it  up  a  moment  in  her  taper  fingers,  and  then, 
depositing  it  in  a  little  velvet  bag  hanging  at  her  girdle,  she 
closed  the  snap  upon  it  with  a  little  vindictive  wave  of  triumph. 
Every  movement  was  graceful,  rapid,  effective. 

Half  a  dozen  German  throats  broke  into  guttural  protest. 
Amid  the  storm  of  laughter  and  remonstrance,  the  door 
suddenly  opened.  The  fluttered  parlour-maid  mumbled  a  long 
name,  and,  with  a  port  of  soldierly  uprightness,  there  advanced 
behind  her  a  large  fair-haired  woman,  followed  by  a  gentleman, 
and  in  the  distance  by  another  figure. 

Rose  drew  back  a  moment  astounded,  one  hand  on  the  piano, 
her  dress  sweeping  round  her.  An  awkward  silence  fell  on  the 
chattering  circle  of  musicians. 

'  Good  heavens  ! '  said  Langham  to  himself,  '  Lady  Charlotte 
Wynnstay ! ' 

'How  do  you  do,  Miss  LeyburnT  said  one  of  the  most 
piercing  of  voices.  '  Are  you  surprised  to  see  me  ?  You  didn't 
ask  me — perhaps  you  don  t  want  me.  But  I  have  come,  you  see, 
partly  because  my  nephew  was  coming,'  and  she  pointed  to  the 
gentleman  behind  her,  '  partly  because  I  meant  to  punish  you 
for  not  having  come  to  see  me  last  Thursday.  Why  didn't  you  1 ' 

'Because  we  thought  you  were  still  away,'  said  Rose,  who 
had  by  this  time  recovered  her  self-possession.  'But  if  you 
meant  to  punish  me,  Lady  Charlotte,  you  have  done  it  badly. 
I  am  delighted  to  see  you.  May  I  introduce  my  sister  ?  Agnes, 
will  you  find  Lady  Charlotte  Wynnstay  a  chair  by  mamma  ? ' 

'  Oh,  you  wish,  I  see,  to  dispose  of  me  at  once,'  said  the  other 
imperturbably.  '  What  is  happening  ?  Is  it  music  ? ' 

'  Aunt  Charlotte,  that  is  most  disingenuous  on  your  part.  I 
gave  you  ample  warning.' 

Rose  turned  a  smiling  face  towards  the  speaker.  It  was  Mr. 
Flaxman,  Lady  Charlotte's  companion. 

'  You  need  not  have  drawn  the  picture  too  black,  Mr.  Flax- 
man. There  is  an  escape.  If  Lady  Charlotte  will  only  let  my 
sister  take  her  into  the  next  room,  she  will  find  herself  well  out 
of  the  clutches  of  the  music.  Oh,  Robert !  Here  you  are  at 
last!  Lady  Charlotte,  you  remember  my  brother-in-law? 
Robert,  will  you  get  Lady  Charlotte  some  tea  ? ' 

'  /  am  not  going  to  be  banished,'  said  Mr.  Flaxman,  looking 
down  upon  her,  his  well-bred,  slightly  worn  face  aglow  with 
animation  and  pleasure. 

'Then  you  will  be  deafened,'  said  Rose,  laughing,  as  she 
escaped  from  him  a  moment,  to  arrange  for  a  song  from  a  tall 
formidable  maiden,  built  after  the  fashion  of  Mr.  Gilbert's 
contralto  heroines,  with  a  voice  which  bore  out  the  ample 
promise  of  her  frame. 


398  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

'Your  sister  is  a  terribly  self-possessed  young  person,  Mr. 
Elsmere,'  said  Lady  Charlotte,  as  Robert  piloted  her  across  the 
room. 

'Does  that  imply  praise  or  blame  on  your  part,  Lady 
Charlotte  ? '  asked  Robert,  smiling. 

'Neither  at  present.  I  don't  know  Miss  Leyburn  well 
enough.  I  merely  state  a  fact.  No  tea,  Mr.  Elsmere.  I  have 
had  three  teas  already,  and  I  am  not  like  the  American  woman 
who  could  always  worry  down  another  cup.' 

She  was  introduced  to  Mrs.  Leyburn ;  but  the  plaintive 
invalid  was  immediately  seized  with  terror  of  her  voice  and 
appearance,  and  was  infinitely  grateful  to  Robert  for  removing 
her  as  promptly  as  possible  to  a  chair  on  the  border  of  the  two 
rooms  where  she  could  talk  or  listen  as  she  pleased.  For  a  few 
moments  she  listened  to  Fraulein  Adelmann  s  veiled  unmanage- 
able contralto  ;  then  she  turned  magisterially  to  Robert  stand- 
ing behind  her. 

'The  art  of  singing  has  gone  out,'  she  declared,  'since  the 
Germans  have  been  allowed  to  meddle  in  it.  By  the  way,  Mr. 
Elsmere,  how  do  you  manage  to  be  here?  Are  you  taking  a 
holiday  ? ' 

Robert  looked  at  her  with  a  start. 

'  I  have  left  Murewell,  Lady  Charlotte.' 

'  Left  Murewell ! '  she  said  in  astonishment,  turning  round  to 
look  at  him,  her  eyeglass  in  her  eye.  '  Why  has  Helen  told  me 
nothing  about  it  1  Have  you  got  another  living  ? ' 

'  No.  My  wife  and  I  are  settling  in  London.  We  only  told 
Lady  Helen  of  our  intentions  a  few  weeks  ago.' 

To  which  it  may  be  added  that  Lady  Helen,  touched  and 
dismayed  by  Elsmere's  letter  to  her,  had  not  been  very  eager  to 
hand  over  the  woes  of  her  friends  to  her  aunt's  cool  and 
irresponsible  comments. 

Lady  Charlotte  deliberately  looked  at  him  a  minute  longer 
through  her  glass.  Then  she  let  it  fall. 

'  You  don't  mean  to  tell  me  any  more,  I  can  see,  Mr.  Elsmere. 
But  you  will  allow  me  to  be  astonished  ? ' 

'Certainly,'  he  said,  smiling  sadly,  and  immediately  after- 
wards relapsing  into  silence. 

'  Have  you  heard  of  the  squire  lately  ? '  he  asked  her  after  a 
pause. 

'  Not  from  him.  We  are  excellent  friends  when  we  meet,  but 
he  doesn't  consider  me  worth  writing  to.  His  sister — little  idiot 
— writes  to  me  every  now  and  then.  But  she  has  not  vouch- 
safed me  a  letter  since  the  summer.  I  should  say  from  the  last 
accounts  that  he  was  breaking.' 

'  He  had  a  mysterious  attack  of  illness  just  before  I  left,'  said 
Robert  gravely.  '  It  made  one  anxious.' 

'  Oh,  it  is  the  old  story.  All  the  Wendovers  have  died  of  weak 
hearts  or  queer  brains — generally  of  both  together.  I  imagine 
you  had  some  experience  of  the  squire's  queerness  at  one  time, 


CHAP,  xxxi  ROSE  399 

Mr.  Elsmere.  I  can't  say  you  and  he  seemed  to  be  on  particu- 
larly good  terms  on  the  only  occasion  I  ever  had  the  pleasure  of 
meeting  you  at  Murewell.' 

She  looked  up  at  him,  smiling  grimly.  She  had  a  curiously 
exact  memory  for  the  unpleasant  scenes  of  life. 

'  Oh,  you  remember  that  unlucky  evening  ! '  said  Robert,  red- 
dening a  little.  'We  soon  got  over  that.  We  became  great 
friends.' 

Again,  however,  Lady  Charlotte  was  struck  by  the  quiet 
melancholy  of  his  tone.  How  strangely  the  look  of  youth—- 
which had  been  so  attractive  in  him  the  year  before — had  ebbed 
from  the  man's  face — from  complexion,  eyes,  expression  !  She 
stared  at  him,  full  of  a  brusque  tormenting  curiosity  as  to  the 
how  and  why. 

'  I  hope  there  is  some  one  among  you  strong  enough  to  manage 
Miss  Rose,'  she  said  presently,  with  an  abrupt  change  of  subject. 
'  That  little  sister-in-law  of  yours  is  going  to  be  the  rage.' 

'  Heaven  forbid  ! '  cried  Robert  fervently. 

'  Heaven  will  do  nothing  of  the  kind.  She  is  twice  as  pretty 
as  she  was  last  year ;  I  am  told  she  plays  twice  as  well.  She 
had  always  the  sort  of  manner  that  provoked  people  one  moment 
and  charmed  them  the  next.  And,  to  judge  by  my  few  words 
with  her  just  now,  I  should  say  she  had  developed  it  finely. 
Well,  now,  Mr.  Elsmere,  who  is  going  to  take  care  of  her  ? ' 

'  I  suppose  we  shall  all  have  a  try  at  it,  Lady  Charlotte.' 

'  Her  mother  doesn't  look  to  me  a  person  of  nerve  enough,' 
said  Lady  Charlotte  coolly.  '  She  is  a  girl  certain— absolutely 
certain — to  have  adventures,  and  you  may  as  well  be  prepared 
for  them.' 

'  I  can  only  trust  she  will  disappoint  your  expectations,  Lady 
Charlotte,'  said  Robert,  with  a  slightly  sarcastic  emphasis. 

'Elsmere,  who  is  that  man  talking  to  Miss  Ley  burn?'  asked 
Langham  as  the  two  friends  stood  side  by  side,  a  little  later, 
watching  the  spectacle. 

'  A  certain  Mr.  Flaxman,  brother  to  a  pretty  little  neighbour 
of  ours  in  Surrey — Lady  Helen  Varley — and  nephew  to  Lady 
Charlotte.  I  have  not  seen  him  here  before ;  but  I  think  the 
girls  like  him.' 

'  Is  he  the  Flaxman  who  got  the  mathematical  prize  at  Berlin 
last  year  ? ' 

'Yes,  I  believe  so.  A  striking  person  altogether.  He  is 
enormously  rich,  Lady  Helen  tells  me,  in  spite  of  an  elder 
brother.  All  the  money  in  his  mother's  family  has  come  to  him, 
and  he  is  the  heir  to  Lord  Daniel's  great  Derbyshire  property. 
Twelve  years  ago  I  used  to  hear  him  talked  about  incessantly 
by  the  Cambridge  men  one  met.  "Citizen  Flaxman"  they 
called  him,  for  his  opinions'  sake.  He  would  ask  his  scout  to 
dinner,  and  insist  on  dining  with  his  own  servants,  and  shaking 
hands  witli  his  friends'  butlers.  The  scouts  and  the  butlers  put 


400  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

an  end  to  that,  and  altogether,  I  imagine,  the  world  disappointed 
him.  He  has  a  story,  poor  fellow,  too — a  young  wife,  who  died 
with  her  first  baby  ten  years  ago.  The  world  supposes  him 
never  to  have  got  over  it,  which  makes  him  all  the  more  inter- 
esting. A  distinguished  face,  don't  you  think  1 — the  good  type 
of  English  aristocrat.' 

Langham  assented.  But  his  attention  was  fixed  on  the  group 
in  which  Rose's  bright  hair  was  conspicuous  ;  and  when  Robert 
left  him  and  went  to  amuse  Mrs.  Leyburn,  he  still  stood  rooted 
to  the  same  spot  watching.  Rose  was  leaning  against  the  piano, 
one  hand  behind  her,  her  whole  attitude  full  of  a  young,  easy, 
self-confident  grace.  Mr.  Flaxman  was  standing  beside  her,  and 
they  were  deep  in  talk— serious  talk  apparently,  to  judge  by  her 
quiet  manner  and  the  charmed  attentive  interest  of  his  look. 
Occasionally,  however,  there  was  a  sally  on  her  part,  and  an 
answering  flash  of  laughter  on  his  ;  but  the  stream  of  conversa- 
tion closed  immediately  over  the  interruption,  and  flowed  on  as 
evenly  as  before. 

Unconsciously  Langham  retreated  farther  and  farther  into 
the  comparative  darkness  of  the  inner  room.  He  felt  himself 
singularly  insignificant  and  out  of  place,  and  he  made  no  more 
efforts  to  talk.  Rose  played  a  violin  solo,  and  played  it  with 
astonishing  delicacy  and  fire.  When  it  was  over  Langham  saw 
her  turn  from  the  applauding  circle  crowding  in  upon  her  and 
throw  a  smiling  interrogative  look  over  her  shoulder  at  Mr. 
Flaxman.  Mr.  Flaxman  bent  over  her,  and  as  he  spoke  Lang- 
ham  caught  her  flush,  and  the  excited  sparkle  of  her  eyes.  Was 
this  the  '  some  one  in  the  stream '  ?  No  doubt ! — no  doubt ! 

When  the  party  broke  up  Langham  found  himself  borne  to- 
wards the  outer  room,  and  before  he  knew  where  he  was  going 
he  was  standing  beside  her. 

'  Are  you  here  still  ? '  she  said  to  him,  startled,  as  he  held  out 
his  hand.  He  replied  by  some  comments  on  the  music,  a  little 
lumbering  and  infelicitous,  as  all  his  small-talk  was.  She  hardly 
listened,  but  presently  she  looked  up  nervously,  compelled  as  it 
were  by  the  great  melancholy  eyes  above  her. 

'  We  are  not  always  in  this  turmoil,  Mr.  Langham.  Perhaps 
some  other  day  you  will  come  and  make  friends  witli  my 
mother  ? ' 


CHAPTER   XXXH 

NATURALLY,  it  was  during  their  two  months  of  autumn  travel 
that  Elsmere  and  Catherine  first  realised  in  detail  what  Elsmere's 
act  was  to  mean  to  them,  as  husband  and  wife,  in  the  future. 
Each  left  England  with  the  most  tender  and  heroic  resolves. 
And  no  one  who  knows  anything  of  life  will  need  to  be  told  that 
even  for  these  two  finely-natured  people  such  resolves  were  in 
finitely  easier  to  make  than  to  carry  out. 


CHAP,  xxxn  ROSE  401 

'  i  will  not  preach  to  you — I  will  not  persecute  you ! '  Catherine 
had  said  to  her  husband  at  the  moment  of  her  first  shock  and 
anguish.  And  she  did  her  utmost,  poor  thing,  to  keep  her  word  ! 
All  through  the  innumerable  bitternesses  which  accompanied 
Elsmere's  withdrawal  from  Murewell — the  letters  which  followed 
them,  the  remonstrances  of  public  and  private  friends,  the  para- 
graphs which  found  their  way,  do  what  they  would,  into  the 
newspapers — the  pain  of  deserting,  as  it  seemed  to  her,  certain 
poor  and  helpless  folk  who  had  been  taught  to  look  to  her  and 
Robert,  and  whose  bewildered  lamentations  came  to  them 
through  young  Armitstead — through  all  this  she  held  her  peace  ; 
she  did  her  best  to  soften  Robert's  grief ;  she  never  once  re- 
proached him  with  her  own. 

But  at  the  same  time  the  inevitable  separation  of  their  in- 
most hopes  and  beliefs  had  thrown  her  back  on  herself,  had  im- 
mensely strengthened  that  puritan  independent  fibre  in  her 
which  her  youth  had  developed,  and  which  her  happy  marriage 
had  only  temporarily  masked,  not  weakened.  Never  had 
Catherine  believed  so  strongly  and  intensely  as  now,  when  the 
husband,  who  had  been  the  guide  and  inspirer  of  her  religious 
life,  had  given  up  the  old  faith  and  practices.  By  virtue  of  a 
kind  of  nervous  instinctive  dread,  his  relaxations  bred  increased 
rigidity  in  her.  Often  when  she  was  alone — or  at  night — she 
was  seized  with  a  lonely,  an  awful  sense  of  responsibility.  Oh  ! 
let  her  guard  her  faith,  not  only  for  her  own  sake,  her  child's, 
her  Lord's,  but  for  his — that  it  might  be  given  to  her  patience 
at  last  to  lead  him  back. 

And  the  only  way  in  which  it  seemed  to  her  possible  to  guard 
it  was  to  set  up  certain  barriers  of  silence.  She  feared  that 
fiery  persuasive  quality  in  Kobert  she  had  so  often  seen  at  work 
on  other  people.  With  him  conviction  was  life — it  was  the  man 
himself,  to  an  extraordinary  degree.  How  was  she  to  resist  the 
pressure  of  those  new  ardours  with  which  his  mind  was  filling 
— she  who  loved  him  ! — except  by  building,  at  any  rate  for  the 
time,  an  enclosure  of  silence  round  her  Christian  belief s  ?  It 
was  in  some  ways  a  pathetic  repetition  of  the  situation  between 
Robert  and  the  squire  in  the  early  days  of  their  friendship,  but 
in  Catherine's  mind  there  was  no  troubling  presence  of-  new 
knowledge  conspiring  from  within  with  the  forces  without.  At 
this  moment  of  her  life  she  was  more  passionately  convinced 
than  ever  that  the  only  knowledge  truly  worth  having  in  this 
world  was  the  knowledge  of  God's  mercies  in  Christ. 

So  gradually  with  a  gentle  persistency  she  withdrew  certain 
parts  of  herself  from  Robert's  ken ;  she  avoided  certain  subjects, 
or  anything  that  might  lead  to  them  ;  she  ignored  the  religious 
and  philosophical  books  he  was  constantly  reading  •  she  prayed 
and  thought  alone— always  for  him,  of  him — but  still  resolutely 
alone.  It  was  impossible,  however,  that  so  great  a  change  in 
their  life  could  be  effected  without  a  perpetual  sense  of  breaking 
links,  a  perpetual  series  of  dumb  wounds  and  griefs  on  both 

2D 


402  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

sides.  There  came  a  moment  when,  as  he  sat  alone  one  evening 
in  a  pine  wood  above  the  Lake  of  Geneva,  Elsmere  suddenly 
awoke  to  the  conviction  that  in  spite  of  all  his  efforts  and 
illusions,  their  relation  to  each  other  was  altering,  dwindling, 
impoverishing :  the  terror  of  that  summer  night  at  Murewell 
was  being  dismally  justified. 

His  own  mind  during  this  time  was  in  a  state  of  perpetual 
discovery,  '  sailing  the  seas  where  there  was  never  sand ' — the 
vast  shadowy  seas  of  speculative  thought.  All  his  life,  reserve 
to  those  nearest  to  him  had  been  pain  and  grief  to  him.  He 
was  one  of  those  people,  as  we  know,  who  throw  off  readily  ;  to 
whom  sympathy,  expansion,  are  indispensable:  who  suffer 
physically  and  mentally  from  anything  cold  and  rigid  beside 
them.  And  now,  at  every  turn,  in  their  talk,  their  reading,  in 
many  of  the  smallest  details  of  their  common  existence,  Elsmere 
began  to  feel  the  presence  of  this  cold  and  rigid  something. 
He  was  ever  conscious  of  self-defence  on  her  side,  of  pained 
drawing  back  on  his.  And  with  every  succeeding  effort  of  his 
at  self-repression,  it  seemed  to  him  as  though  fresh  nails  were 
driven  into  the  coffin  of  that  old  free  habit  of  perfect  confidence 
which  had  made  the  heaven  of  their  life  since  they  had  been 
man  and  wife. 

He  sat  on  for  long,  through  the  September  evening,  ponder- 
ing, wrestling.  Was  it  simply  inevitable,  the  natural  result  of 
his  own  act,  and  of  her  antecedents,  to  which  he  must  submit 
himself,  as  to  any  mutilation  or  loss  of  power  in  the  body  ?  The 
young  lover  and  husband  rebelled — the  believer  rebelled — 
against  the  admission.  Probably  if  his  change  had  left  him 
anchorless  and  forsaken,  as  it  leaves  many  men,  he  would  have 
been  ready  enough  to  submit,  in  terror  lest  his  own  forlornness 
should  bring  about  hers.  But  in  spite  of  the  intellectual  con- 
fusion, which  inevitably  attends  any  wholesale  reconstruction 
of  a  man's  platform  of  action,  he  had  never  been  more  sure  of 
God,  or  the  Divine  aims  of  the  world,  than  now ;  never  more 
open  than  now,  amid  this  exquisite  Alpine  world,  to  those  passion- 
ate moments  of  religious  trust  which  are  man's  eternal  defiance 
to  the  iron  silences  about  him.  Originally,  as  we  know,  he  had 
shrunk  from  the  thought  of  change  in  her  corresponding  to  his 
own  ;  now  that  his  own  foothold  was  strengthening,  his  longing 
for  a  new  union  was  overpowering  that  old  dread.  The  pros- 
elytising instinct  may  be  never  quite  morally  defensible,  even 
as  between  husband  and  wife.  Nevertheless,  in  all  strong,  con- 
vinced, and  ardent  souls  it  exists,  and  must  be  reckoned  with. 

At  last  one  evening  he  was  overcome  by  a  sudden  impulse 
which  neutralised  for  the  moment  his  nervous  dread  of  hurting 
her.  Some  little  incident  of  their  day  together  was  rankling, 
and  it  was  borne  in  upon  him  that  almost  any  violent  protest 
on  her  part  would  have  been  preferable  to  this  constant  soft 
evasion  of  hers,  which  was  gradually,  imperceptibly  dividing 
heart  from  heart. 


CHAi'.  xxxn  ROSE  403 

They  were  in  a  bare  attic  room  at  the  very  top  of  one  of  the 
huge  newly -built  hotels  which  during  the  last  twenty  years 
have  invaded  all  the  high  places  of  Switzerland.  The  August 
which  had  been  so  hot  in  England  had  been  rainy  and  broken 
in  Switzerland.  But  it  had  been  followed  by  a  warm  and 
mellow  September,  and  the  favourite  hotels  below  a  certain 
height  were  still  full.  When  the  Elsmeres  arrived  at  Les 
Avants,  this  scantily  furnished  garret,  out  of  which  some 
servants  had  been  hurried  to  make  room  for  them,  was  all  that 
could  be  found.  They,  however,  liked  it  for  its  space  and  its 
view.  They  looked  sideways  from  their  windows  on  to  the 
upper  end  of  the  lake,  three  thousand  feet  below  them.  Opposite, 
across  the  blue  water,  rose  a  grandiose  rampart  of  mountains, 
the  stage  on  which  from  morn  till  night  the  sun  went  through  a 
long  transformation  scene  of  beauty.  The  water  was  marked 
every  now  and  then  by  passing  boats  and  steamers — tiny  specks 
which  served  to  measure  the  vastness  of  all  around  them.  To 
right  and  left,  spui'S  of  green  mountains  shut  out  alike  the 
lower  lake  and  the  icy  splendours  of  the  '  Valais  depths  pro- 
found.' What  made  the  charm  of  the  narrow  prospect  was, 
first,  the  sense  it  produced  in  the  spectator  of  hanging  dizzily 
above  the  lake,  with  infinite  air  below  him,  and,  then,  the 
magical  effects  of  dawn  and  evening,  when  wreaths  of  mist 
would  blot  out  the  valley  and  the  lake,  and  leave  the  eye  of  the 
watcher  face -to  face  across  the  fathomless  abyss  with  the 
majestic  mountain  mass,  and  its  attendant  retinue  of  clouds,  as 
though  they  and  he  were  alone  in  the  universe. 

It  was  a  peaceful  September  night.  From  the  open  window 
beside  him  Ilobert  could  see  a  world  of  high  moonlight,  limited 
and  invaded  on  all  sides  by  sharp  black  masses  of  shade.  A 
few  rare  lights  glimmered  on  the  spreading  alp  below,  and  every 
now  and  then  a  breath  of  music  came  to  them  wafted  from  a 
military  band  playing  a  mile  or  two  away.  They  had  been 
climbing  most  of  the  afternoon,  and  Catherine  was  lying  down, 
her  brown  hair  loose  about  her,  the  thin  oval  of  her  face  and 
clear  line  of  brow  just  visible  in  the  dim  candlelight. 

Suddenly  he  stretched  out  his  hand  for  his  Greek  Testament, 
which  was  always  near  him,  though  there  had  been  no  common 
reading  since  that  bitter  day  of  his  confession  to  her.  The 
mark  still  lay  in  the  well-worn  volume  at  the  point  reached  in 
their  last  reading  at  Murewell.  He  opened  upon  it,  and  began 
the  eleventh  chapter  of  St.  John. 

Catherine  trembled  when  she  saw  him  take  up  the  book. 
He  began  without  preface,  treating  the  passage  before  him  in 
his  usual  way, — that  is  to  say,  taking  verse  after  verse  in  the 
Greek,  translating  and  commenting.  She  never  spoke  all 
through,  and  at  last  he  closed  the  little  Testament,  and  bent 
towards  her,  his  look  full  of  feeling. 

'  Catherine  !  can't  you  let  me — will  you  never  let  me  tell  you^ 
now,  how  that  story — how  the  old  things — affect  me,  from  the 


404  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

new  point  of  view  ?  You  always  stop  me  when  I  try.  I  believe 
you  think  of  me  as  having  thrown  it  all  away.  Would  it  not 
comfort  you  sometimes,  if  you  knew  that  although  much  of  the 
Gospels,  this  very  raising  of  Lazarus,  for  instance,  seem  to  me 
no  longer  true  in  the  historical  sense,  still  they  are  always  full 
to  me  of  an  ideal,  a  poetical  truth?  Lazarus  may  not  have 
died  and  come  to  life,  may  never  have  existed  ;  but  still  to  me, 
now  as  always,  love  for  Jesus  of  Nazareth  is  "  resurrection  "  and 
"life"?' 

He  spoke  with  the  most  painful  diffidence,  the  most  wistful 
tenderness. 

There  was  a  pause.  Then  Catherine  said,  in  a  rigid  con- 
strained voice, — 

'  If  the  Gospels  are  not  true  in  fact,  as  history,  as  reality,  I 
cannot  see  how  they  are  true  at  all,  or  of  any  value.' 

The  next  minute  she  rose,  and,  going  to  the  little  wooden 
dressing-table,  she  began  to  brush  out  and  plait  for  the  night 
her  straight  silky  veil  of  hair.  As  she  passed  him  Robert  saw 
her  face  pale  and  set. 

He  sat  quiet  another  moment  or  two,  and  then  he  went 
towards  her  and  took  her  in  his  arms. 

'  Catherine,'  he  said  to  her,  his  lips  trembling,  '  am  I  never  to 
speak  my  mind  to  you  any  more  1  Do  you  mean  always  to  hold 
me  at  arm's  length — to  refuse  always  to  hear  what  I  have  to 
say  in  defence  of  the  change  which  has  cost  us  both  so  much  ? ' 

She  hesitated,  trying  hard  to  restrain  herself.  But  it  was  of 
no  use.  She  broke  into  tears — quiet  but  most  bitter  tears. 

'  Robert,  I  cannot !  Oh  !  you  must  see  I  cannot.  It  is  not 
because  I  am  hard,  but  because  I  am  weak.  How  can  I  stand 
up  against  you?  I  dare  not — I  dare  not.  If  you  were  not 
yourself — not  my  husband — 

Her  voice  dropped.  Robert  guessed  that  at  the  bottom  of 
her  resistance  there  was  an  intolerable  fear  of  what  love  might 
do  with  her  if  she  once  gave  it  an  opening.  He  felt  himself 
cruel,  brutal,  and  yet  an  urgent  sense  of  all  that  was  at  stake 
drove  him  on. 

'  I  would  not  press  or  worry  you,  God  knows  ! '  he  said,  almost 
piteously,  kissing  her  forehead  as  she  lay  against  him.  'But 
remember,  Catherine,  I  cannot  put  these  things  aside.  I  once 
thought  I  could — that  I  could  fall  back  on  my  historical  work, 
and  leave  religious  matters  alone  as  far  as  criticism  was  con- 
cerned. But  I  cannot.  They  fill  my  mind  more  and  more.  I 
feel  more  and  more  impelled  to  search  them  out,  and  to  put  my 
conclusions  about  them  into  shape.  And  all  the  time  this  is 
going  on,  are  you  and  I  to  remain  strangers  to  one  another  in 
all  that  concerns  our  truest  life — are  we,  Catherine  1 ' 

He  spoke  in  a  low  voice  of  intense  feeling.  She  turned  her 
face  and  pressed  her  lips  to  his  hand.  Both  had  the  scene  in 
the  wood-path  after  her  flight  and  return  in  their  minds,  and 
both  were  filled  with  a  despairing  sense  of  the  difficulty  of 


CHAP,  xxxii  ROSE  405 

living,  not  through  great  crises,  but  through  the  detail  of 
every  day. 

'  Could  you  not  work  at  other  things  ? '  she  whispered. 

He  was  silent,  looking  straight  before  him  into  the  moonlit 
shimmer  and  white  spectral  hazes  of  the  valley,  his  arms  still 
round  her. 

'  No  ! '  he  burst  out  at  last ;  '  not  till  I  have  satisfied  myself. 
I  feel  it  burning  within  me,  like  a  command  from  God,  to  work 
out  the  problem,  to  make  it  clearer  to  myself — and  to  others,' 
he  added  deliberately. 

Her  heart  sank  within  her.  The  last  words  called  up  before 
her  a  dismal  future  of  controversy  and  publicity,  in  which  at 
every  step  she  would  be  condemning  her  husband. 

'And  all  this  time,  all  these  years,  perhaps,'  he  went  on — 
before,  in  her  perplexity,  she  could  find  words, — 'is  my  wife 
never  going  to  let  me  speak  freely  to  her  1  Am  I  to  act,  think, 
judge,  without  her  knowledge  ?  Is  she  to  know  less  of  me  than 
a  friend,  less  even  than  the  public  for  whom  I  write  or  speak  ? ' 

It  seemed  intolerable  to  him,  all  the  more  that  every  moment 
they  stood  there  together  it  was  being  impressed  upon  him  that 
in  fact  this  was  what  she  meant,  what  she  had  contemplated 
from  the  beginning. 

'  Robert,  I  cannot  defend  myself  against  you,'  she  cried,  again 
clinging  to  him.  '  Oh,  think  for  me  !  You  know  what  I  feel ; 
that  I  dare  not  risk  what  is  not  mine  ! ' 

He  kissed  her  again,  and  then  moved  away  from  her  to  the 
window.  It  began  to  be  plain  to  him  that  his  effort  was  merely 
futile,  and  had  better  not  have  been  made.  But  his  heart  was 
very  sore. 

'Do  you  ever  ask  yourself,'  he  said  presently,  looking 
steadily  into  the  night — no,  I  don't  think  you  can,  Catherine— 
what  part  the  reasoning  faculty,  that  faculty  which  marks  us 
out  from  the  animal,  was  meant  to  play  in  life  ?  Did  God  give 
it  to  us  simply  that  you  might  trample  upon  it  and  ignore  it, 
both  in  yourself  and  me  ? ' 

She  had  dropped  into  a  chair,  and  sat  with  clasped  hands, 
her  hair  falling  about  her  white  dressing-gown,  and  framing  the 
nobly -featured  face  blanched  by  the  moonlight.  She  did  not 
attempt  a  reply,  but  the  melancholy  of  an  invincible  resolution, 
which  was,  so  to  speak,  not  her  own  doing,  but  rather  was  like 
a  necessity  imposed  upon  her  from  outside,  breathed  through 
her  silence. 

He  turned  and  looked  at  her.  She  raised  her  arms,  and  the 
gesture  reminded  him  for  a  moment  of  the  Donatello  figure  in 
the  Murewell  library — the  same  delicate  austere  beauty,  the 
same  tenderness,  the  same  underlying  reserve.  He  took  her 
outstretched  hands  and  held  them  against  his  breast.  His 
hotly-beating  heart  told  him  that  he  was  perfectly  right,  and 
that  to  accept  the  barriers  she  was  setting  up  would  impoverish 
all  their  future  life  together.  But  he  could  not  struggle  with 


406  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

the  woman  on  whom  he  had  already  inflicted  so  severe  a  prac- 
tical trial.  Moreover,  he  felt  strangely  as  he  stood  there  the 
danger  of  rousing  in  her  those  illimitable  possibilities  of  the 
religious  temper,  the  dread  of  which  had  once  before  risen 
spectre-like  in  his  heart. 

So  once  more  he  yielded.  She  rewarded  him  with  all  the 
charm,  all  the  delightfulness,  of  which  under  the  circumstances 
she  was  mistress.  They  wandered  up  the  Khone  valley,  through 
the  St.  Gothard,  and  spent  a  fortnight  between  Como  and 
Lugano.  During  these  days  her  one  thought  was  to  revive 
and  refresh  him,  and  he  let  her  tend  him,  and  lent  himself  to 
the  various  heroic  futilities  by  which  she  would  try — as  part  of 
her  nursing  mission — to  make  the  future  look  less  empty  and 
their  distress  less  real.  Of  course  under  all  this  delicate  give 
and  take  both  suffered ;  both  felt  that  the  promise  of  their 
marriage  had  failed  them,  and  that  they  had  come  dismally 
down  to  a  second  best.  But  after  all  they  were  young,  and  the 
autumn  was  beautiful — and  though  they  hurt  each  other,  they 
were  alone  together  and  constantly,  passionately,  interested  in 
each  other.  Italy,  too,  softened  all  things — even  Catherine's 
English  tone  and  temper.  As  long  as  the  delicious  luxury  of 
the  Italian  autumn,  with  all  its  primitive  pagan  suggestiveness, 
was  still  round  them  ;  as  long  as  they  were  still  among  the 
cities  of  the  Lombard  plain — that  battle-ground  and  highway 
of  nations,  which  roused  all  Robert's  historical  enthusiasm,  and 
set  him  reading,  discussing,  thinking,  in  his  old  impetuous 
way,  about  something  else  than  minute  problems  of  Christian 
evidence, — the  new-born  friction  between  them  was  necessarily 
reduced  to  a  minimum. 

But  with  their  return  home,  with  their  plunge  into  London 
life,  the  difficulties  of  the  situation  began  to  define  them- 
selves more  sharply.  In  after  years,  one  of  Catherine's  dreariest 
memories  was  the  memory  of  their  first  instalment  in  the  Bed- 
ford Square  house.  Robert's  anxiety  to  make  it  pleasant  and 
homelike  was  pitiful  to  watch.  He  had  none  of  the  modern 
passion  for  upholstery,  and  probably  the  vaguest  notions  of 
what  was  aesthetically  correct.  But  during  their  furnishing 
days  he  was  never  tired  of  wandering  about  in  search  of  pretty 
things — a  rug,  a  screen,  an  engraving — which  might  brighten 
the  rooms  in  which  Catherine  was  to  live.  He  would  put  every- 
thing in  its  place  with  a  restless  eagerness,  and  then  Catherine 
would  be  called  in,  and  would  play  her  part  bravely.  She 
would  smile  and  ask  questions,  and  admire,  and  then  when 
Robert  had  gone,  she  would  move  slowly  to  the  window  and 
look  out  at  the  great  mass  of  the  British  Museum  frowning 
beyond  the  little  dingy  strip  of  garden,  with  a  sick  longing  in 
her  heart  for  the  Murewell  cornfield,  the  wood-path,  the  village, 
the  free  air-bathed  spaces  of  heath  and  common.  Oh !  this 
huge  London,  with  its  unfathomable  poverty  and  its  heartless 


CHAP,  xxxn  ROSE  407 

wealth — how  it  oppressed  and  bewildered  her  !  Its  mere  grime 
and  squalor,  its  murky  poisoned  atmosphere,  were  a  perpetual 
trial  to  the  countrywoman  brought  up  amid  the  dash  of  moun- 
tain streams  and  the  scents  of  mountain  pastures.  She  drooped 
physically  for  a  time,  as  did  the  cliild. 

But  morally?  With  Catherine  everything  really  depended 
on  the  moral  state.  She  could  have  followed  Robert  to  a 
London  living  with  a  joy  and  hope  which  would  have  completely 
deadened  all  these  repulsions  of  the  senses  now  so  active  in  her. 
But  without  this  inner  glow,  in  the  presence  of  the  profound 
spiritual  difference  circumstance  had  developed  between  her 
and  the  man  she  loved,  everything  was  a  burden.  Even  her 
religion,  though  she  clung  to  it  with  an  ever-increasing  tenacity, 
failed  at  this  period  to  bring  her  much  comfort.  Every  night 
it  seemed  to  her  that  the  day  had  been  one  long  and  dreary 
struggle  to  make  something  out  of  nothing  ;  and  in  the  morning 
the  night,  too,  seemed  to  have  been  alive  with  conflict — All  Thy 
waves  and  Thy  storms  have  gone  over  me  / 

Robert  guessed  it  all,  and  whatever  remorseful  love  could  do 
to  soften  such  a  strain  and  burden  he  tried  to  do.  He  encour- 
aged her  to  find  work  among  the  poor ;  he  tried  in  the  tenderest 
ways  to  interest  her  in  the  great  spectacle  of  London  life  which 
was  already,  in  spite  of  yearning  and  regret,  beginning  to  fasci- 
nate and  absorb  himself.  But  their  standards  were  now  so 
different  that  she  was  constantly  shrinking  from  what  attracted 
him,  or  painfully  judging  what  was  to  him  merely  curious  and 
interesting.  He  was  really  more  and  more  oppressed  by  her 
intellectual  limitations,  though  never  consciously  would  he  have 
allowed  himself  to  admit  them,  and  she  was  more  and  more 
bewildered  by  what  constantly  seemed  to  her  a  breaking  up  of 
principle,  a  relaxation  of  moral  fibre. 

And  the  work  among  the  poor  was  difficult.  Robert  instinc- 
tively felt  that  for  him  to  oner  his  services  in  charitable  work 
to  the  narrow  Evangelical,  whose  church  Catherine  had  joined, 
would  have  been  merely  to  invite  rebuff.  So  that  even  in  the 
love  and  care  of  the  unfortunate  they  were  separated.  For  he 
had  not  yet  found  a  sphere  of  work,  and,  if  he  had,  Catherine's 
invincible  impulse  in  these  matters  was  always  to  attach  herself 
to  the  authorities  and  powers  that  be.  He  could  only  acquiesce 
when  she  suggested  applying  to  Mr.  Clarendon  for  some  charit- 
able occupation  for  herself. 

After  her  letter  to  him,  Catherine  had  an  interview  with  the 
vicar  at  his  home.  She  was  puzzled  by  the  start  and  sudden 
pause  for  recollection  with  which  he  received  her  name,  the  tone 
of  compassion  which  crept  into  his  talk  with  her,  the  pitying 
look  and  grasp  of  the  hand  with  which  he  dismissed  her.  Then, 
as  she  walked  home,  it  flashed  upon  her  that  she  had  seen  a  copy, 
some  weeks  old,  of  the  JRecord  lying  on  the  good  man's  table, 
the  very  copy  which  contained  Robert's  name  among  the  list  of 
men  who  during  the  last  ten  years  had  thrown  up  the  Anglican 


408  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

ministry.  The  delicate  face  flushed  miserably  from  brow  to 
chin,  Pitied  for  being  Robert's  wife !  Oh,  monstrous  ! — in- 
credible ! 

Meanwhile  Robert,  man-like,  in  spite  of  all  the  griefs  and 
sorenesses  of  the  position,  had  immeasurably  the  best  of  it.  In 
the  first  place  such  incessant  activity  of  mind  as  his  is  in  itself 
both  tonic  and  narcotic.  It  was  constantly  generating  in  him 
fresh  purposes  and  hopes,  constantly  deadening  regret,  and 
pushing  the  old  things  out  of  sight.  He  was  full  of  many  pro- 
jects, literary  and  social,  but  they  were  all  in  truth  the  fruits  of 
one  long  experimental  process,  the  passionate  attempt  of  the 
reason  to  justify  to  itself  the  God  in  whom  the  heart  believed. 
Abstract  thought,  as  Mr.  Grey  saw,  had  had  comparatively  little 
to  do  with  Elsmere's  relinquishment  of  the  Church  of  England. 
But  as  soon  as  the  Christian  bases  of  faith  were  overthrown, 
that  faith  had  naturally  to  find  for  itself  other  supports  and 
attachments.  For  faith  itself — in  God  and  a  spiritual  order — 
had  been  so  wrought  into  the  nature  by  years  of  reverent  and 
adoring  living  that  nothing  could  destroy  it.  With  Elsmere,  as 
with  all  men  of  religious  temperament,  belief  in  Christianity 
and  faith  in  God  had  not  at  the  outset  been  a  matter  of  reason- 
ing at  all,  but  of  sympathy,  feeling,  association,  daily  experi- 
ence. Then  the  intellect  had  broken  in,  and  destroyed  or  trans- 
formed the  belief  in  Christianity.  But  after  the  crash,  faith 
emerged  as  strong  as  ever,  only  craving  and  eager  to  make  a 
fresh  peace,  a  fresh  compact  with  the  reason. 

Elsmere  had  heard  Grey  say  long  ago  in  one  of  the  few 
moments  of  real  intimacy  he  had  enjoyed  with  him  at  Oxford, 
'  My  interest  in  philosophy  springs  solely  from  the  chance  it 
offers  me  of  knowing  something  more  of  God  ! '  Driven  by  the 
same  thirst  he  too  threw  himself  into  the  same  quest,  pushing 
his  way  laboriously  through  the  philosophical  borderlands  of 
science,  through  the  ethical  speculation  of  the  day,  through  the 
history  of  man's  moral  and  religious  past.  And  while  on  the 
one  hand  the  intellect  was  able  to  contribute  an  ever  stronger 
support  to  the  faith  which  was  the  man,  on  the  other  the  sphere 
in  him  of  a  patient  ignorance  which  abstains  from  all  attempts 
at  knowing  what  man  cannot  know,  and  substitutes  trust  for 
either  knowledge  or  despair,  was  perpetually  widening.  'I 
take  my  stand  on  conscience  and  the  moral  life  ! '  was  the  up- 
shot of  it  all.  '  In  them  I  find  my  God  !  As  for  all  these  various 
problems,  ethical  and  scientific,  which  you  press  upon  me,  my 
pessimist  friend,  I,  too,  am  bewildered  ;  I,  too,  have  no  explana- 
tion to  offer.  But  I  trust  and  wait.  In  spite  of  them — beyond 
them — I  have  abundantly  enough  for  faith — for  hope — for 
action  ! ' 

We  may  quote  a  passage  or  two  from  some  letters  of  his 
written  at  this  time  to  that  young  Armitstead  who  had  taken 
his  place  at  Murewell,  and  was  still  there  till  Mowbray  Elsmere 
should  appoint  a  new  man.  Armitstead  had  been  a  college 


CHAP,  xxxu  ROSE  409 

friend  of  Elsmere's.  He  was  a  High  Churchman  of  a  singularly 
gentle  and  delicate  type,  and  the  manner  in  which  he  had 
received  Elsmere's  story  on  the  day  of  his  arrival  at  Murewell 
had  permanently  endeared  him  to  the  teller  of  it.  At  the  same 
time  the  defection  from  Christianity  of  a  man  who  at  Oxford 
had  been  to  him  the  object  of  much  hero-worship,  and,  since 
Oxford,  an  example  of  pastoral  efficiency,  had  painfully  affected 
young  Armitstead,  and  he  began  a  correspondence  with  Robert 
which  was  in  many  ways  a  relief  to  both.  In  Switzerland  and 
Italy,  when  his  wife's  gentle  inexorable  silence  became  too  op- 
pressive to  him,  Robert  would  pour  himself  out  in  letters  to 
Armitstead,  and  the  correspondence  did  not  altogether  cease 
with  his  return  to  London.  To  the  squire  during  the  same 
period  Elsmere  also  wrote  frequently,  but  rarely  or  never  on 
religious  matters. 

On  one  occasion  Armitstead  had  been  pressing  the  favourite 
Christian  dilemma  —  Christianity  or  nothing.  Inside  Chris- 
tianity, light  and  certainty  ;  outside  it,  chaos.  '  If  it  were  not 
for  the  Gospels  and  the  Church  I  should  be  a  Positivist  to- 
morrow. Your  Theism  is  a  mere  arbitrary  hypothesis,  at  the 
mercy  of  any  rival  philosophical  theory.  How,  regarding  our 
position  as  precarious,  you  should  come  to  regard  your  own  as 
stable,  is  to  me  incomprehensible  ! ' 

'  What  I  conceive  to  be  the  vital  difference  between  Theism 
and  Christianity,'  wrote  Elsmere  in  reply,  'is  that  as  an  ex- 
planation of  things  Theism  can  never  be  disproved.  At  the 
worst  it  must  always  remain  in  the  position  of  an  alternative 
hypothesis,  which  the  hostile  man  of  science  cannot  destroy, 
though  he  is  under  no  obligation  to  adopt  it.  Broadly  speak- 
ing, it  is  not  the  facts  which  are  in  dispute,  but  the  inference 
to  be  drawn  from  them. 

'Now,  considering  the  enormous  complication  of  the  facts, 
the  Theistic  inference  will,  to  put  it  at  the  lowest,  always  have 
its  place,  always  command  respect.  The  man  of  science  may 
not  adopt  it,  but  by  no  advance  of  science  that  I,  at  any  rate, 
can  foresee,  can  it  be  driven  out  of  the  field. 

'  Christianity  is  in  a  totally  different  position.  Its  grounds 
are  not  philosophical  but  literary  and  historical.  It  rests  not 
upon  all  fact,  but  upon  a  special  group  of  facts.  It  is,  and  will 
always  remain,  a  great  literary  and  historical  problem,  a  ques- 
tion of  documents  and  testimony.  Hence,  the  Christian  explana- 
tion is  vulnerable  in  a  way  in  which  the  Theistic  explanation 
can  never  be  vulnerable.  The  contention,  at  any  rate,  of  persons 
in  my  position  is :  That  to  the  man  who  has  had  the  special 
training  required,  -and  in  whom  this  training 'has  not  been 
neutralised  by  any  overwhelming  bias  of  temperament,  it  can 
be  as  clearly  demonstrated  that  the  miraculous  Christian  story 
rests  on  a  tissue  of  mistake,  as  it  can  be  demonstrated  that  the 
Isidorian  Decretals  were  a  forgery,  or  the  correspondence  of 
Paul  and  Seneca  a  pious  fraud,  or  that  the  mediaeval  belief  in 


410  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

witchcraft  was  the  product  of  physical  ignorance  and  super 
stition.' 

'  You  say,'  he  wrote  again,  in  another  connection,  to  Armit- 
stead  from  Milan,  'you  say  you  think  my  later  letters  have 
been  far  too  aggressive  and  positive.  I,  too,  am  astonished  at 
myself.  I  do  not  know  my  own  mood,  it  is  so  clear,  so  sharp, 
so  combative.  Is  it  the  spectacle  of  Italy,  I  wonder — of  a 
country  practically  without  religion — the  spectacle  in  fact  of 
Latin  Europe  as  a  whole,  and  the  practical  Atheism  in  which  it 
is  ingulfed  f  My  dear  friend,  the  problem  of  the  world  at  this 
moment  is — how  to  find  a  religion  ? — some  great  conception 
which  shall  be  once  more  capable,  as  the  old  were  capable,  of 
welding  societies,  and  keeping  man's  brutish  elements  in  check. 
Surely  Christianity  of  the  traditional  sort  is  failing  everywhere 
— less  obviously  with  us,  and  in  Teutonic  Europe  generally,  but 
egregiously,  notoriously,  in  all  the  Catholic  countries.  We  talk 
complacently  of  the  decline  of  Buddhism.  But  what  have  we 
to  say  of  the  decline  of  Christianity  1  And  yet  this  last  is 
infinitely  more  striking  and  more  tragic,  inasmuch  as  it  affects 
a  more  important  section  of  mankind.  I,  at  any  rate,  am  not 
one  of  those  who  would  seek  to  minimise  the  results  of  this 
decline  for  human  life,  nor  can  I  bring  myself  to  believe  that 
Positivism  or  "  evolutional  morality  "  will  ever  satisfy  the  race. 

'  In  the  period  of  social  struggle  which  undeniably  lies  before 
us,  both  in  the  old  and  the  new  world,  are  we  then  to  witness  a 
war  of  classes,  unsof  tened  by  the  ideal  hopes,  the  ideal  law,  of  faith  ? 
It  looks  like  it.  What  does  the  artisan  class,  what  does  the  town 
democracy  throughout  Europe,  care  any  longer  for  Christian 
checks  or  Christian  sanctions  as  they  have  been  taught  to  under- 
stand them  ?  Superstition,  in  certain  parts  of  rural  Europe,  there 
is  in  plenty,  but  wherever  you  get  intelligence  and  therefore  move- 
ment, you  get  at  once  either  indifference  to,  or  a  passionate 
break  with,  Christianity.  And  consider  what  it  means,  what 
it  will  mean,  this  Atheism  of  the  great  democracies  which  are 
to  be  our  masters  !  The  world  has  never  seen  anything  like  it ; 
such  spiritual  anarchy  and  poverty  combined  with  such  material 
power  and  resource.  Every  society — Christian  and  non-Chris- 
tian— has  always  till  now  had  its  ideal,  of  greater  or  less  ethical 
value,  its  appeal  to  something  beyond  man.  Has  Christianity 
brought  us  to  this :  that  the  Christian  nations  are  to  be  the 
first  in  the  world's  history  to  try  the  experiment  of  a  life  with- 
out faith — that  life  which  you  and  I,  at  any  rate,  are  agreed  in 
thinking  a  life  worthy  only  of  the  brute  ? 

'  Oh  forgive  me  !  These  things  must  hurt  you — they  would 
have  hurt  me  in  old  days — but  they  burn  within  me,  and  you 
bid  me  speak  out.  What  if  it  be  God  Himself  who  is  driving 
His  painful  lesson  home  to  me,  to  you,  to  the  world  ?  What 
does  it  mean,  this  gradual  growth  of  what  we  call  infidelity,  of 
criticism  and  science  on  the  one  hand,  this  gradual  death  of  the 
old  traditions  on  the  other  1  Sin,  you  answer,  the  enmity  of  tJie 


CHAP,  xxxn  ROSE  411 

human  mind  against  God,  the  momentary  tn*iumph  of  Satan. 
And  so  you  acquiesce,  heavy-hearted,  in  God's  present  defeat, 
looking  for  vengeance  and  requital  hereafter.  Well,  I  am  not 
so  ready  to  believe  in  man's  capacity  to  rebel  against  his  Maker  ! 
Where  you  see  ruin  and  sin,  I  see  the  urgent  process  of  Divine 
education,  God's  steady  ineluctable  command  "to  put  away 
childish  things,"  the  pressure  of  His  spirit  on  ours  towards  new 
ways  of  worship  and  new  forms  of  love  ! ' 

And  after  a  while,  it  was  with  these  '  new  ways  of  worship 
and  new  forms  of  love '  that  the  mind  began  to  be  perpetually 
occupied.  The  break  with  the  old  things  was  no  sooner  com- 
plete than  the  eager  soul,  incapable  then,  as  always,  of  resting 
in  negation  or  opposition,  pressed  passionately  forward  to  a 
new  synthesis,  not  only  speculative,  but  practical.  Before  it 
rose  perpetually  the  haunting  vision  of  another  palace  of  faith 
— another  church  or  company  of  the  faithful,  which  was  to 
become  the  shelter  of  human  aspiration  amid  the  desolation 
and  anarchy  caused  by  the  crashing  of  the  old  !  How  many 
men  and  women  must  have  gone  through  the  same  strait  as 
itself — how  many  must  be  watching  with  it  through  the  dark- 
ness for  the  rising  of  a  new  City  of  God  ! 

One  afternoon,  close  upon  Christmas,  he  found  himself  in 
Parliament  Square,  on  his  way  towards  Westminster  Bridge 
and  the  Embankment.  The  beauty  of  a  sunset  sky  behind  the 
Abbey  arrested  him,  and  he  stood  leaning  over  the  railings 
beside  the  Peel  statue  to  look. 

The  day  before  he  had  passed  the  same  spot  with  a  German 
friend.  His  companion — a  man  of  influence  and  mark  in  his 
own  country,  who  had  been  brought  up,  however,  in  England, 
and  knew  it  well — had  stopped  before  the  Abbey  and  had  said 
to  him  with  emphasis  :  '  I  never  find  myself  in  this  particular 
spot  of  London  without  a  sense  of  emotion  and  reverence. 
Other  people  feel  that  in  treading  the  Forum  of  Rome  they  are 
at  the  centre  of  human  things.  I  am  more  thrilled  by  West- 
minster than  Rome ;  your  venerable  Abbey  is  to  me  the  symbol 
of  a  nationality  to  which  the  modern  world  owes  obligations  it 
can  never  repay.  You  are  rooted  deep  in  the  past ;  you  have 
also  a  future  of  infinite  expansiveness  stretching  before  you. 
Among  European  nations  at  this  moment  you  alone  have  free- 
dom in  the  true  sense,  you  alone  have  religion.  I  would  give  a 
year  of  life  to  know  what  you  will  have  made  of  your  freedom 
and  your  religion  two  hundred  years  hence  ! ' 

As  Robert  recalled  the  words,  the  Abbey  lay  before  him, 
wrapped  in  the  bluish  haze  of  the  winter  afternoon.  Only  the 
towers  rose  out  of  the  mist,  gray  and  black  against  the  red 
bands  of  cloud.  A  pair  of  pigeons  circled  round  them,  as  care- 
less and  free  in  flight  as  though  they  were  alone  with  the  towers 
and  the  sunset.  Below,  the  streets  were  full  of  people ;  the 
omnibuses  rolled  to  and  fro  ;  the  lamps  were  just  lit ;  lines  of 


412  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

straggling  figures,  dark  in  the  half  light,  were  crossing  the 
street  here  and  there.  And  to  all  the  human  rush  and  swirl 
below,  the  quiet  of  the  Abbey  and  the  infinite  red  distances  of 
sky  gave  a  peculiar  pathos  and  significance. 

Robert  filled  his  eye  and  sense,  and  then  walked  quickly 
away  towards  the  Embankment.  Carrying  the  poetry  and 
grandeur  of  England's  past  with  him,  he  turned  his  face  east- 
ward to  the  great  new-made  London  on  the  other  side  of  St. 
Paul's,  the  London  of  the  democracy,  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
and  of  the  future.  He  was  wrestling  with  himself,  a  prey  to 
one  of  those  critical  moments  of  life,  when  circumstance  seems 
once  more  to  restore  to  us  the  power  of  choice,  of  distributing 
a  Yes  or  a  No  among  the  great  solicitations  which  meet  the 
human  spirit  on  its  path  from  silence  to  silence.  The  thought 
of  his  friend's  reverence,  and  of  his  own  personal  debt  towards 
the  country  to  whose  long  travail  of  centuries  he  owed  all  his 
own  joys  and  faculties,  was  hot  within  him. 

'  Here  and  here  did  England  help  me — how  can  I  help  England, — say! ' 

Ah !  that  vast  chaotic  London  south  and  east  of  the  great 
church  !  He  already  knew  something  of  it.  A  Liberal  clergy- 
man there,  settled  in  the  very  blackest,  busiest  heart  of  it,  had 
already  made  him  welcome  on  Mr.  Grey's  introduction.  He  had 
gone  with  this  good  man  on  several  occasions  through  some 
little  fraction  of  that  teeming  world,  now  so  hidden  and  peace- 
ful between  the  murky  river  mists  and  the  cleaner  light-filled 
grays  of  the  sky.  He  had  heard  much,  and  pondered  a  good 
deal,  the  quick  mind  caught  at  once  by  the  differences,  some 
tragic,  some  merely  curious  and  stimulating,  between  the 
monotonous  life  of  his  own  rural  folk,  and  the  mad  rush,  the 
voracious  hurry,  the  bewildering  appearances  and  disappear- 
ances, the  sudden  ingulfments,  of  working  London. 

Moreover,  he  had  spent  a  Sunday  or  two  wandering  among 
the  East  End  churches.  There,  rather  than  among  the  streets 
and  courts  outside,  as  it  had  seemed  to  him,  lay  the  tragedy  of 
the  city.  Such  emptiness,  such  desertion,  such  a  hopeless  breach 
between  the  great  craving  need  outside  and  the  boon  offered  it 
within !  Here  and  there,  indeed,  a  patch  of  bright  coloured 
success,  as  it  claimed  to  be,  where  the  primitive  tendency  of 
man  towards  the  organised  excitement  of  religious  ritual,  visible 
in  all  nations  and  civilisations,  had  been  appealed  to  with  more 
energy  and  more  results  than  usual.  But  in  general,  blank 
failure,  or  rather  obvious  want  of  success — as  the  devoted  men 
now  beating  the  void  there  were  themselves  the  first  to  admit, 
with  pain  and  patient  submission  to  the  inscrutable  Will  of 
God. 

But  is  it  not  time  we  assured  ourselves,  he  was  always  asking, 
whether  God  is  still  in  truth  behind  the  offer  man  is  perpetually 
making  to  his  brother  man  on  His  behalf  ?  He  was  behind  it 
once,  and  it  had  efficacy,  had  power.  But  now — what  if  all 


CHAP,  xxxii  ROSE  413 

these  processes  of  so-called  destruction  and  decay  were  but  the 
mere  workings  of  that  divine  plastic  force  which  is  for  ever 
moulding  human  society?  What  if  these  beautiful  venerable 
things  which  had  fallen  from  him,  as  from  thousands  of  his 
fellows,  represented,  in  the  present  stage  of  the  world's  history, 
not  the  props,  but  the  hindrances,  of  man  1 

And  if  all  these  large  things  were  true,  as  he  believed,  what 
should  be  the  individual's  part  in  this  transition  England  ? 
Surely,  at  the  least,  a  part  of  plain  sincerity  of  act  and  speech 
— a  correspondence  as  perfect  as  could  be  reached  between  the 
inner  faith  and  the  outer  word  and  deed.  So  much,  at  the 
least,  was  clearly  required  of  him  ! 

'  Do  not  imagine,'  he  said  to  himself,  as  though  with  a  fierce 
dread  of  possible  self-delusion,  '  that  it  is  in  you  to  play  any 
great,  any  commanding  pai't.  Shun  the  thought  of  it,  if  it  were 
possible  !  But  let  me  do  what  is  given  me  to  do  !  Here,  in  this 
human  wilderness,  may  I  spend  whatever  of  time  or  energy  or 
faculty  may  be  mine,  in  the  faithful  attempt  to  help  forward 
the  new  House  of  Faith  that  is  to  be,  though  my  utmost  efforts 
should  but  succeed  in  laying  some  obscure  stone  in  still  unseen 
foundations !  Let  me  try  and  hand  on  to  some  other  human 
soul,  or  souls,  before  I  die,  the  truth  which  has  freed,  and  which 
is  now  sustaining,  my  own  heart.  Can  any  man  do  more  ?  Is 
not  every  man  who  feels  any  certainty  in  him  whatever  bound 
to  do  as  much  ?  What  matter  if  the  wise  folk  scoff,  if  even  at 
times,  and  in  a  certain  sense,  one  seems  to  one's  self  ridiculous — 
absurdly  lonely  and  powerless  !  All  great  changes  are  preceded 
by  numbers  01  sporadic,  and  as  the  bystander  thinks,  impotent 
efforts.  But  while  the  individual  effort  sinks,  drowned  perhaps 
in  mockery,  the  general  movement  quickens,  gathers  force  we 
know  not  how,  and — 

'  While  the  tired  wave  vainly  breaking, 

Seems  here  no  painful  inch  to  gain, 
Far  back  through  creeks  and  inlets  making, 

Comes  silent,  flooding  in  the  main  ! ' 

Darkness  sank  over  the  river ;  all  the  gray  and  purple 
distance  with  its  dim  edge  of  spires  and  domes  against  the  sky, 
all  the  vague  intervening  blacknesses  of  street,  or  bridge,  or 
railway  station  were  starred  and  patterned  with  lights.  The 
vastness,  the  beauty  of  the  city  filled  him  with  a  sense  of 
mysterious  attraction,  and  as  he  walked  on  with  his  face  up- 
lifted to  it,  it  was  as  though  he  took  his  life  in  his  hand  and 
flung  it  afresh  into  the  human  gulf. 

'  What  does  it  matter  if  one's  work  be  raw  and  uncomely  ! 
All  that  lies  outside  the  great  organised  traditions  of  an  age 
must  always  look  so.  Let  me  bear  my  witness  bravely,  not 
spending  life  in  speech,  but  not  undervaluing  speech — above 
all,  not  being  ashamed  or  afraid  of  it,  because  other  wise  people 
may  prefer  a  policy  of  silence.  A  man  has  but  the  one  puny 


414  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

life,  the  one  tiny  spark  of  faith.  Better  be  venturesome  with 
both  for  God's  sake,  than  over-cautious,  over-thrifty.  And — to 
his  own  Master  he  standeth  or  falleth  ! ' 

Plans  of  work  of  all  kinds,  literary  and  practical,  thoughts 
of  preaching  in  some  bare  hidden  room  to  men  and  women 
orphaned  and  stranded  like  himself,  began  to  crowd  upon  him. 
The  old  clerical  instinct  in  him  winced  at  some  of  them.  Robert 
had  nothing  of  the  sectary  about  him  by  nature  ;  he  was  always 
too  deeply  and  easily  affected  by  the  great  historic  existences 
about  him.  But  when  the  Oxford  man  or  the  ex-official  of  one 
of  the  most  venerable  and  decorous  of  societies  protested,  the 
believer,  or,  if  you  will,  the  enthusiast,  put  the  protest  by. 

And  so  the  dream  gathered  substance  and  stayed  with  him, 
till  at  last  he  found  himself  at  his  own  door.  As  he  closed  it 
behind  him,  Catherine  came  out  into  the  pretty  old  hall  from 
the  dining-room. 

'  Robert,  have  you  walked  all  the  way  ? ' 

'Yes.  I  came  along  the  Embankment.  Such  a  beautiful 
evening ! ' 

He  slipped  his  arm  inside  hers,  and  they  mounted  the  stairs 
together.  She  glanced  at  him  wistfully.  She  was  perfectly 
aware  that  these  months  were  to  him  months  of  incessant 
travail  of  spirit,  and  she  caught  at  this  moment  the  old  strenu- 
ous look  of  eye  and  brow  she  knew  so  well.  A  year  ago,  and 
every  thought  of  his  mind  had  been  open  to  her — and  now — she 
herself  had  shut  them  out — but  her  heart  sank  within  her. 

She  turned  and  kissed  him.  He  bent  his  head  fondly  over 
her.  But  inwardly  all  the  ardour  of  his  mood  collapsed  at  the 
touch  of  her.  For  the  protests  of  a  world  in  arms  can  be  with- 
stood with  joy,  but  the  protest  that  steals  into  your  heart,  that 
takes  love's  garb  and  uses  love's  ways — there  is  the  difficulty  ! 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 

BUT  Robert  was  some  time  in  finding  his  opening,  in  realising 
any  fraction  of  his  dream.  At  first  he  tried  work  under  the 
Broad  Church  vicar  to  whom  Grey  had  introduced  him.  He 
undertook  some  rent-collecting,  and  some  evening  lectures  on 
elementary  science  to  boys  and  men.  But  after  a  while  he 
began  to  feel  his  position  false  and  unsatisfactory.  In  truth, 
his  opinions  were  in  the  main  identical  with  those  of  the  vicar 
under  whom  he  was  acting.  But  Mr.  Vernon  was  a  Broad 
Churchman,  belonged  to  the  Church  Reform  movement,  and 
thought  it  absolutely  necessary  to  '  keep  things  going,'  and  by 
a  policy  of  prudent  silence  and  gradual  expansion  from  within, 
to  save  the  great  '  plant'  of  the  Establishment  from  falling 
wholesale  into  the  hands  of  the  High  Churchmen.  In  conse- 
quence he  was  involved,  as  Robert  held,  in  endless  contradictions 


CHAP,  xxxin  ROSE  415 

and  practical  falsities  of  speech  and  action.  His  large  church 
was  attended  by  a  handful  of  some  fifty  to  a  hundred  persons. 
Vernon  could  not  preach  what  he  did  believe,  and  would  not 
preach,  more  than  was  absolutely  necessary,  what  he  did  not 
believe.  He  was  hard-working  and  kind-hearted,  but  the  per- 
petual divorce  between  thought  and  action,  which  his  position 
made  inevitable,  was  constantly  blunting  and  weakening  all  he 
did.  His  whole  life,  indeed,  was  one  long  waste  of  power,  simply 
for  lack  of  an  elementary  frankness. 

But  if  these  became  Robert's  views  as  to  Vernon,  Vernon's 
feeling  towards  Elsmere  after  six  weeks'  acquaintance  was  not 
less  decided.  He  was  constitutionally  timid,  and  he  probably 
divined  in  his  new  helper  a  man  of  no  ordinary  calibre,  whose 
influence  might  very  well  turn  out  some  day  to  be  of  the  '  in- 
calculably diffusive  kind.  He  grew  uncomfortable,  begged 
Elsmere  to  beware  of  any  '  direct  religious  teaching,'  talked  in 
warm  praise  of  a  'policy  of  omissions,'  and  in  equally  warm 
denunciation  of  '  anything  like  a  policy  of  attack.'  In  short,  it 
became  plain  that  two  men  so  much  alike,  and  yet  so  different, 
could  not  long  co-operate. 

However,  just  as  the  fact  was  being  brought  home  to  Elsmere, 
a  friendly  chance  intervened. 

Hugh  Flaxman,  the  Levburns'  new  acquaintance  and  Lady 
Helen's  brother,  had  been  drawn  to  Elsmere  at  first  sight ;  and 
a  meeting  or  two,  now  at  Lady  Charlotte's,  now  at  the  Leyburns', 
had  led  both  men  far  on  the  way  to  a  friendship.  Of  Hugh 
Flaxman  himself  more  hereafter.  At  present  all  that  need  be 
recorded  is  that  it  was  at  Mr.  Flaxman's  house,  overlooking  St. 
James's  Park,  Robert  first  met  a  man  who  was  to  give  him  the 
opening  for  which  he  was  looking. 

Mr.  Flaxman  was  fond  of  breakfast  parties  a  la  Rogers,  and 
on  the  first  occasion  when  Robert  could  be  induced  to  attend 
one  of  these  functions,  he  saw  opposite  to  him  what  he  sup- 
posed to  be  a  lad  of  twenty,  a  young  slip  of  a  fellow,  whose 
sallies  of  fun  and  invincible  good  humour  attracted  him 
greatly. 

Sparkling  brown  eyes,  full  lips  rich  in  humour  and  pugnacity, 
'lockes  crull  as  they  were  layde  in  presse,'  the  same  look  of 
'  wonderly '  activity  too,  in  spite  of  his  short  stature  and  dainty 
make,  as  Chaucer  lends  his  squire — the  type  was  so  fresh  and 
pleasing  that  Robert  was  more  and  more  held  by  it,  especially 
when  he  discovered  to  his  bewilderment  that  the  supposed 
stripling  must  be  from  his  talk  a  man  quite  as  old  as  himself, 
an  official  besides,  filling  what  was  clearly  some  important  place 
in  the  world.  He  took  his  full  share  in  the  politics  and  litera- 
ture started  at  the  table,  and  presently,  when  conversation  fell 
on  the  proposed  municipality  for  London,  said  things  to  which 
the  whole  party  listened.  Robert's  curiosity  was  aroused,  and 
after  breakfast  he  questioned  his  host  and  was  promptly  intro- 
duced to  '  Mr.  Murray  Edwardes.' 


416  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

Whereupon  it  turned  out  that  this  baby -faced  sage  was 
filling  a  post,  in  the  work  of  which  perhaps  few  people  in 
London  could  have  taken  so  much  interest  as  Robert  Elsmere. 

Fifty  years  before,  a  wealthy  merchant  who  had  been  one  of 
the  chief  pillars  of  London  Unitarianism  had  made  his  will  and 
died.  His  great  warehouses  lay  in  one  of  the  Eastern  riverside 
districts  of  the  city,  and  in  his  will  he  endeavoured  to  do  some- 
thing according  to  his  lights  for  the  place  in  which  he  had 
amassed  his  money.  He  left  a  fairly  large  bequest  wherewith 
to  build  and  endow  a  Unitarian  chapel  and  found  certain 
Unitarian  charities,  in  the  heart  of  what  was  even  then  one  of 
the  densest  and  most  poverty-stricken  of  London  parishes.  For 
a  long  time,  however,  chapel  and  charities  seemed  likely  to  rank 
as  one  of  the  idle  freaks  of  religious  wealth  and  nothing  more. 
Unitarianism  of  the  old  sort  is  perhaps  the  most  illogical  creed 
that  exists,  and  certainly  it  has  never  been  the  creed  of  the  poor. 
In  old  days  it  required  the  presence  of  a  certain  arid  stratum 
of  the  middle  classes  to  live  and  thrive  at  all.  This  stratum 

was  not  to  be  found  in  R ,  which  rejoiced  instead  in  the 

most  squalid  types  of  poverty  and  crime,  types  wherewith  the 
mild  shrivelled  Unitarian  minister  had  about  as  much  power 
of  grappling  as  a  Poet  Laureate  with  a  Trafalgar  Square 
Socialist. 

Soon  after  the  erection  of  the  chapel,  there  arose  that  shaking 
of  the  dry  bones  of  religious  England  which  we  call  the  Tracta- 

rian  movement.  For  many  years  the  new  force  left  R quite 

undisturbed.  The  parish  church  droned  away,  the  Unitarian 
minister  preached  decorously  to  empty  benches,  knowing  no- 
thing of  the  agitations  outside.  At  last,  however,  towards  the 
end  of  the  old  minister's  life,  a  powerful  church  of  the  new  type, 
staffed  by  friends  and  pupils  of  Pusey,  rose  in  the  centre  of 

R ,  and  the  little  Unitarian  chapel  was  for  a  time  more 

snuffed  out  than  ever,  a  fate  which  this  time  it  shared  dismally 
with  the  parish  church.  As  generally  happened,  however,  in 
those  days,  the  proceedings  at  this  new  and  splendid  St.  Wil- 
frid's were  not  long  in  stirring  up  the  Protestantism  of  the 
British  rough, — the  said  Protestantism  being  always  one  of  the 
finest  excuses  for  brickbats  of  which  the  modern  cockney  is 
master.  The  parish  lapsed  into  a  state  of  private  war — hectic 
clergy  heading  exasperated  processions  or  intoning  defiant 
Litanies  on  the  one  side, — mobs,  rotten  eggs,  dead  cats,  and 
blatant  Protestant  orators  on  the  other. 

The  war  went  on  practically  for  years,  and  while  it  was  still 
raging  the  minister  of  the  Unitarian  chapel  died,  and  the 
authorities  concerned  chose  in  his  place  a  young  fellow,  the  son 
of  a  Bristol  minister,  a  Cambridge  man  besides,  as  chance  would 
have  it,  of  brilliant  attainments,  and  unusually  commended 
from  many  quarters,  even  including  some  Church  ones  of  the 
Liberal  kind.  This  curly -haired  youth,  as  he  was  then  in  reality, 
and  as  to  his  own  quaint  vexation  he  went  on  seeming  to  be 


CHAP,  xxxin  ROSE  417 

up  to  quite  middle  age,  had  the  wit  to  perceive  at  the  moment 
of  his  entry  on  the  troubled  scene  that  behind  all  the  mere 
brutal  opposition  to  the  new  church,  and  in  contrast  with  the 
sheer  indifference  of  three-fourths  of  the  district,  there  was  a 
small  party  consisting  of  an  aristocracy  of  the  artisans,  whose 
protest  against  the  Puseyite  doings  was  of  a  much  quieter 
sterner  sort,  and  amongst  whom  the  uproar  had  mainly  roused 
a  certain  crude  power  of  thinking.  He  threw  himself  upon  this 
element,  which  he  rather  divined  than  discovered,  and  it  re- 
sponded. He  preached  a  simple  creed,  drove  it  home  by  pure 
and  generous  living  ;  he  lectured,  taught,  brought  down  workers 
from  the  West  End,  and  before  he  had  been  five  years  in  harness 

had  not  only  made  himself  a  power  in  R ,  but  was  beginning 

to  be  heard  of  and  watched  with  no  small  interest  by  many 
outsiders. 

This  was  the  man  on  whom  Robert  had  now  stumbled. 
Before  they  had  talked  twenty  minutes  each  was  fascinated  by 
the  other.  They  said  good-bye  to  their  host,  and  wandered 
out  together  into  St.  James's  Park,  where  the  trees  were  white 
with  frost  and  an  orange  sun  was  struggling  through  the  fog. 
Here  Murray  Edwardes  poured  out  the  whole  story  of  his 
ministry  to  attentive  ears.  Robert  listened  eagerly.  Unitar- 
ianism  was  not  a  familiar  subject  of  thought  to  him.  He  had 
never  dreamt  of  joining  the  Unitarians,  and  was  indeed  long 
ago  convinced  that  in  the  beliefs  of  a  Channing  no  one  once 
fairly  started  on  the  critical  road  could  rationally  stop.  That 
common  thinness  and  aridity,  too,  of  the  Unitarian  temper  had 
weighed  with  him.  But  here,  in  the  person  of  Murray  Edwardes, 
it  was  as  though  he  saw  something  old  and  threadbare  revivified. 
The  young  man's  creed,  as  he  presented  it,  had  grace,  persuasive- 
ness, even  unction ;  and  there  was  something  in  his  tone  of 
mind  which  was  like  a  fresh  wind  blowing  over  the  fevered 
places  of  the  other's  heart. 

They  talked  long  and  earnestly,  Edwardes  describing  his  own 
work,  and  the  changes  creeping  over  the  modern  Unitarian 
body,  Elsmere  saying  little,  asking  much. 

At  last  the  young  man  looked  at  Elsmere  with  eyes  of  bright 
decision. 

'You  cannot  work  with  the  Church!'  he  said — 'it  is  im- 
possible. You  will  only  wear  yourself  out  in  efforts  to  restrain 
what  you  could  do  infinitely  more  good,  as  things  stand  now, 
by  pouring  out.  Come  to  us  ! — I  will  put  you  in  the  way.  You 
shall  be  hampered  by  no  pledges  of  any  sort.  Come  and  take 
the  direction  of  some  of  my  workers.  We  have  all  got  our 
hands  more  than  full.  Your  knowledge,  your  experience,  would 
be  invaluable.  There  is  no  other  opening  like  it  in  England 
just  now  for  men  of  your  way  of  thinking  and  mine.  Come  ! 
Who  knows  what  we  may  be  putting  our  hands  to — what  fruit 
may  grow  from  the  smallest  seed  1 ' 

The  two  men  stopped  beside  the  lightly  frozen  water.   Robert 

2  E 


418  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

gathered  that  in  this  soul,  too,  there  had  risen  the  same  large 
intoxicating  dream  of  a  reorganised  Christendom,  a  new  wide- 
spreading  shelter  of  faith  for  discouraged  browbeaten  man,  as 
in  his  own.  '  I  will !'  he  said  briefly,  after  a  pause,  his  own  look 
kindling — '  it  is  the  opening  I  have  been  pining  for.  I  will  give 
you  all  I  can,  and  bless  you  for  the  chance.' 

That  evening  Robert  got  home  late  after  a  busy  day  full  of 
various  engagements.  Mary,  after  some  waiting  up  for  '  Fader,' 
had  just  been  carried  protesting,  red  lips  pouting,  and  fat  legs 
kicking,  off  to  bed.  Catherine  was  straightening  the  room, 
which  had  been  thrown  into  confusion  by  the  child's  romps. 

It  was  with  an  effort — for  he  knew  it  would  be  a  shock  to  her 
— that  he  began  to  talk  to  her  about  the  breakfast-party  at  Mr. 
Flaxman's,  and  his  talk  with  Murray  Edwardes.  But  he  had 
made  it  a  rule  with  himself  to  tell  her  everything  that  he  was 
doing  or  meant  to  do.  She  would  not  let  him  tell  her  what  he 
was  thinking.  But  as  much  openness  as  there  could  be  between 
them,  there  should  be. 

Catherine  listened — still  moving  about  the  while — the  thin 
beautiful  lips  becoming  more  and  more  compressed.  Yes,  it  was 
hard  to  her,  very  hard  ;  the  people  among  whom  she  had  been 
brought  up,  her  father  especially,  would  have  held  out  the  hand 
of  fellowship  to  any  body  of  Christian  people,  but  not  to  the 
Unitarian.  No  real  barrier  of  feeling  divided  them  from  any 
orthodox  Dissenter,  but  the  gulf  between  them  and  the  Unitarian 
had  been  dug  very  deep  by  various  forces — forces  of  thought 
originally,  of  strong  habit  and  prejudice  in  the  course  of  time. 

'  He  is  going  to  work  with  them  now,'  she  thought  bitterly ; 
'soon  he  will  be  one  of  them — perhaps  a  Unitarian  minister 
himself.' 

And  for  the  life  of  her,  as  he  told  his  tale,  she  could  find 
nothing  but  embarrassed  monosyllables,  and  still  more  embar- 
rassed silences,  wherewith  to  answer  him.  Till  at  last  he  too 
fell  silent,  feeling  once  more  the  sting  of  a  now  habitual 
discomfort. 

Presently,  however,  Catherine  came  to  sit  down  beside  him. 
She  laid  her  head  against  his  knee,  saying  nothing,  but  gather- 
ing his  hand  closely  in  both  her  own. 

Poor  woman's  heart !  One  moment  in  rebellion,  the  next  a 
suppliant.  He  bent  down  quickly  and  kissed  her. 

'  Would  you  like,'  he  said  presently,  after  both  had  sat  silent 
a  while  in  the  firelight,  '  would  you  care  to  go  to  Madame  de 
Netteville's  to-night  ? ' 

'  By  all  means,  said  Catherine  with  a  sort  of  eagerness.  '  It 
was  Friday  she  asked  us  for,  wasn't  it  ?  We  will  be  quick  over 
dinner,  and  I  will  go  and  dress.' 

In  that  last  ten  minutes  which  Robert  had  spent  with  the 
squire  in  his  bedroom,  on  the  Monday  afternoon,  when  they 
were  to  have  walked.  Mr.  Wendover  had  drily  recommended 


CHAP,  xxxin  ROSE  419 

Elsmere  to  cultivate  Madame  de  Netteville.  He  sat  propped  up 
in  his  chair,  white,  gaunt,  and  cynical,  and  this  remark  of  his 
was  almost  the  only  reference  he  would  allow  to  the  Elsmere 
move. 

'You  had  better  go  there,'  he  said  huskily,  'it  will  do  you 
good.  She  gets  the  first-rate  people  and  she  makes  them  talk, 
which  Lady  Charlotte  can't.  Too  many  fools  at  Lady  Char- 
lotte's ;  she  waters  the  wine  too  much.' 

And  he  had  persisted  with  the  subject — using  it,  as  Elsmere 
thought,  as  a  means  of  warding  off  other  conversation.  He 
'would  not  ask; Elsmere's  plans,  and  he  would  not  allow  a  word 
about  himself. 

There  had  been  a  heart  attack,  old  Meyrick  thought,  coupled 
with  signs  of  nervous  strain  and  excitement.  It  was  the  last 
ailment  which  evidently  troubled  the  doctor  most.  But,  behind 
the  physical  breakdown,  there  was  to  Robert's  sense  something 
else,  a  spiritual  something,  infinitely  forlorn  and  piteous,  which 
revealed  itself  wholly  against  the  elder  man's  will,  and  filled  the 
younger  with  a  dumb  helpless  rush  of  sympathy.  Since  his  de- 
parture Robert  had  made  the  keeping  up  of  his  correspondence 
with  the  squire  a  binding  obligation,  and  he  was  to-night  chiefly 
anxious  to  go  to  Madame  de  Netteville's  that  he  might  write  an 
account  of  it  to  Murewell. 

Still  the  squire's  talk,  and  hib  own  glimpse  of  her  at  Mure- 
well,  had  made  him  curious  to  see  more  of  the  woman  herself. 
The  squire's  ways  of  describing  her  were  always  half  approving, 
half  sarcastic.  Robert  sometimes  imagined  that  he  himself  had 
been  at  one  time  more  under  her  spell  than  he  cared  to  confess. 
If  so,  it  must  have  been  when  she  was  still  in  Paris,  the  young 
English  widow  of  a  man  of  old  French  family,  rich,  fascinating, 
distinguished,  and  the  centre  of  a  small  salon,  admission  to 
which  was  one  of  the  social  blue  ribbons  of  Paris. 

Since  the  war  of  1870  Madame  de  Netteville  had  fixed  her 
headquarters  in  London,  and  it  was  to  her  house  in  Hans  Place 
that  the  squire  wrote  to  her  about  the  Elsmeres.  She  owed 
Roger  Wendover  debts  of  various  kinds,  and  she  had  an  en- 
couraging memory  of  the  young  clergyman  on  the  terrace  at 
Murewell.  So  she  promptly  left  her  cards,  together  with  the 
intimation  that  she  was  at  home  always  on  Friday  evenings. 

'  I  have  never  seen  the  wife,'  she  meditated,  as  her  delicate 
jewelled  hand  drew  up  the  window  of  the  brougham  in  front  of 
the  Elsmeres'  lodgings.  '  But  if  she  is  the  ordinary  country 
clergyman's  spouse,  the  squire  of  course  will  have  given  the 
young  man  a  hint.' 

But  whether  from  oblivion,  or  from  some  instinct  of  grim 
humour  towards  Catherine,  whom  he  had  always  vaguely  dis- 
liked, the  squire  said  not  one  word  about  his  wife  to  Robert  in 
the  course  of  their  talk  of  Madame  de  Netteville. 

Catherine  took  pains  with  her  dress,  sorely  wishing  to  do 
Robert  credit.  She  put  on  one  of  the  gowns  she  had  taken  to 


420  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

Murewell  when  she  married.  It  was  black,  simply  made, 
and  had  been  a  favourite  with  both  of  them  in  the  old  sur- 
roundings. 

So  they  drove  off  to  Madame  de  Netteville's.  Catherine's 
heart  was  beating  faster  than  usual  as  she  mounted  the  twisting 
stairs  of  the  luxurious  little  house.  All  these  new  social  experi- 
ences were  a  trial  to  her.  But  she  had  the  vaguest,  most  unsus- 
picious ideas  of  what  she  was  to  see  in  this  particular  house. 

A  long  low  room  was  thrown  open  to  them.  Unlike  most 
English  rooms,  it  was  barely  though  richly  furnished.  A  Persian 
carpet,  of  a  self-coloured  grayish  blue,  threw  the  gilt  French' 
chairs  and  the  various  figures  sitting  upon  them  into  delicate 
relief.  The  walls  were  painted  white,  and  had  a  few  French 
mirrors  and  girandoles  upon  them,  half  a  dozen  fine  French 
portraits,  too,  here  and  there,  let  into  the  wall  in  oval  frames. 
The  subdued  light  came  from  the  white  sides  of  the  room,  and 
seemed  to  be  there  solely  for  social  purposes.  You  could  hardly 
have  read  or  written  in  the  room,  but  you  could  see  a  beautiful 
woman  in  a  beautiful  dress  there,  and  you  could  talk  there, 
either  tete-a-tete,  or  to  the  assembled  company,  to  perfection,  so 
cunningly  was  it  all  devised. 

When  the  Elsmeres  entered,  there  were  about  a  dozen  people 
present — ten  gentlemen  and  two  ladies.  One  of  the  ladies, 
Madame  de  Netteville,  was  lying  back  in  the  corner  of  a  velvet 
divan  placed  against  the  wall,  a  screen  between  her  and  a 
splendid  fire  that  threw  its  blaze  out  into  the  room.  The  other, 
a  slim  woman  with  closely  curled  fair  hair,  and  a  neck  abnor- 
mally long  and  white,  sat  near  her,  and  the  circle  of  men  was 
talking  indiscriminately  to  both. 

As  the  footman  announced  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Elsmere,  there  was 
a  general  stir  of  surprise.  The  men  looked  round ;  Madame  de 
Netteville  half  rose  with  a  puzzled  look.  It  was  more  than  a 
month  since  she  had  dropped  her  invitation.  Then  a  flash,  not 
altogether  of  pleasure,  passed  over  her  face,  and  she  said  a  few 
hasty  words  to  the  woman  near  her,  advancing  the  moment 
afterwards  to  give  her  hand  to  Catherine. 

'  This  is  very  kind  of  you,  Mrs.  Elsmere,  to  remember  me  so 
soon.  I  had  imagined  you  were  hardly  settled  enough  yet  to 
give  me  the  pleasure  of  seeing  you.' 

But  the  eyes  fixed  on  Catherine,  eyes  which  took  in  every- 
thing, were  not  cordial,  for  all  their  smile. 

Catherine,  looking  up  at  her,  was  overpowered  by  her  exces- 
sive manner,  and  by  the  woman's  look  of  conscious  sarcastic 
strength,  _  struggling  through  all  the  outer  softness  of  beauty 
and  exquisite  dress. 

'Mr.  Elsmere,  you  will  find  this  room  almost  as  hot,  I  am 
afraid,  as  that  afternoon  on  which  we  met  last.  Let  me  intro- 
duce you  to  Count  Wielandt — Mr.  Elsmere.  Mrs.  Elsmere,  will 
you  come  over  here,  beside  Lady  Aubrey  Willert.' 

Robert  found  himself  bowing  to  a  young  diplomatist,  who 


CHAP,  xxxin  ROSE  421 

seemed  to  him  to  look  at  him  very  much  as  he  himself  might 
have  scrutinised  an  inhabitant  of  New  Guinea.  Lady  Aubrey 
made  an  imperceptible  movement  of  the  head  as  Catherine  was 
presented  to  her,  and  Madame  de  Netteville,  smiling  and  biting 
her  lip  a  little,  fell  back  into  her  seat. 

There  was  a  faint  odour  of  smoke  in  the  room.  As  Catherine 
sat  down,  a  young  exquisite  a  few  yards  from  her  threw  the  end 
of  a  cigarette  into  the  fire  with  a  little  sharp  decided  gesture. 
Lady  Aubrey  also  pushed  away  a  cigarette  case  which  lay 
beside  her  hand. 

Everybody  there  had  the  air  more  or  less  of  an  habitue  of  the 
house ;  and  when  the  conversation  began  again,  the  Elsmeres 
found  it  very  hard,  in  spite  of  certain  perfunctory  efforts  on  the 
part  of  Madame  de  Netteville,  to  take  any  share  in  it. 

'  Well,  I  believe  the  story  about  Desforets  is  true,'  said  the 
fair-haired  young  Apollo,  who  had  thrown  away  his  cigarette, 
lolling  back  in  his  chair. 

Catherine  started,  the  little  scene  with  Rose  and  Langham  in 
the  English  rectory  garden  flashing  incongruously  back  upon  her. 

'  If  you  get  it  from  the  Ferret,  my  dear  Evershed,'  said  the 
ex-Tory  minister,  Lord  Rupert,  '  you  may  put  it  down  as  a  safe 
lie.  As  for  me,  I  believe  she  has  a  much  shrewder  eye  to  the 
main  chance.' 

'  What  do  you  mean  ? '  said  the  other,  raising  astonished  eye- 
brows. 

'Well,  it  doesn't  pay,  you  know,  to  write  yourself  down  a 
fiend — not  quite.' 

'  What — you  think  it  will  affect  her  audiences  ?  Well,  that 
is  a  good  joke  ! '  and  the  young  man  laughed  immoderately, 
joined  by  several  of  the  other  guests. 

'  I  don't  imagine  it  will  make  any  difference  to  you,  my  good 
friend,'  returned  Lord  Rupert  imperturbably  ;  '  but  the  British 
public  haven't  got  your  nerve.  They  may  take  it  awkwardly — 
I  don't  say  they  will — when  a  woman  who  has  turned  her  own 
young  sister  out  of  doors  at  night,  in  St.  Petersburg,  so  that 
ultimately  as  a  consequence  the  girl  dies,  comes  to  ask  them  to 
clap  her  touching  impersonations  of  injured  virtue.' 

'  What  has  one  to  do  with  an  actress's  private  life,  my  dear 
Lord  Rupert  ? '  asked  Madame  de  Netteville,  her  voice  slipping 
with  a  smooth  clearness  into  the  conversation,  her  eyes  darting 
light  from  under  straight  black  brows. 

'  What  indeed  ! '  said  the  young  man  who  had  begun  the  con- 
versation with  a  disagreeable  enigmatical  smile,  stretching  out 
his  hand  for  another  cigarette,  and  drawing  it  back  with  a  look 
under  his  drooped  eyelids — a  look  of  cold  impertinent  scrutiny — 
at  Catherine  Elsmere. 

'  Ah  !  well — I  don't  want  to  be  obtrusively  moral — Heaven 
forbid  !  But  there  is  such  a  thing  as  destroying  the  illusion  to 
such  an  extent  that  you  injure  your  pocket.  Desforets  is  doing 
it — doing  it  actually  in  Paris  too.' 


422  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

There  was  a  ripple  of  laughter. 

'Paris  and  illusions — 0  mon  Dieu  !'  groaned  young  Evershed, 
when  he  had  done  laughing,  laying  meditative  hands  on  his 
knees  and  gazing  into  the  fire. 

'  I  tell  you  I  have  seen  it,'  said  Lord  Rupert,  waxing  com- 
bative, and  slapping  the  leg  he  was  nursing  with  emphasis. 
'  The  last  time  I  went  to  see  Desf orets  in  Paris  the  theatre  was 
crammed,  and  the  house — theatrically  speaking — ice.  They  re- 
ceived her  in  dead  silence — they  gave  her  not  one  single  recall 
— and  they  only  gave  her  a  clap,  that  I  can  remember,  at  those 
two  or  three  points  in  the  play  where  clap  they  positively  must 
or  burst.  They  go  to  see  her — but  they  loathe  her — and  they 
let  her  know  it.' 

'  Bah  ! '  said  his  opponent,  '  it  is  only  because  they  are  tired  of 
her.  Her  vagaries  don't  amuse  them  any  longer — they  know 
them  by  heart.  And — by  George !  she  has  some  pretty  rivals  too, 
now  ! '  he  added  reflectively, — 'not  to  speak  of  the  Bernhardt.' 

'  Well,  the  Parisians  can  be  shocked,'  said  Count  Wielandt  in 
excellent  English,  bending  forward  so  as  to  get  a  good  view  of 
his  hostess.  '  They  are  just  now  especially  shocked  by  the  con- 
dition of  English  morals  ! ' 

The  twinkle  in  his  eye  was  irresistible.  The  men,  under- 
standing his  reference  to  the  avidity  with  which  certain  English 
aristocratic  scandals  had  been  lately  seized  upon  by  the-  French 
papers,  laughed  out — so  did  Lady  Aubrey.  Madame  de  Nette- 
ville  contented  herself  with  a  smile. 

'  They  profess  to  be  shocked,  too,  by  Kenan's  last  book,'  said 
the  editor  from  the  other  side  of  the  room. 

'  Dear  me  ! '  said  Lady  Aubrey,  with  meditative  scorn,  fanning 
herself  lightly  the  while,  her  thin  but  extraordinarily  graceful 
head  and  neck  thrown  out  against  the  golden  brocade  of  the 
cushion  behind  her. 

'  Oh  !  what  so  many  of  them  feel  in  Kenan's  case,  of  course,' 
said  Madame  de  Netteville,  '  is  that  every  book  he  writes  now 
gives  a  fresh  opening  to  the  enemy  to  blaspheme.  Your  eminent 
freethinker  can't  afford  just  yet,  in  the  present  state  of  the  world, 
to  make  himself  socially  ridiculous.  The  cause  suffers.' 

'  Just  my  feeling,'  said  young  Evershed  calmly.  '  Though  I 
mayn't  care  a  rap  about  him  personally,  I  prefer  that  a  man  on 
my  own  front  bench  shouldn't  make  a  public  ass  of  himself  if 
he  can  help  it — not  for  his  sake,  of  course,  but  for  mine  ! ' 

Robert  looked  at  Catherine.  She  sat  upright  by  the  side  of 
Lady  Aubrey ;  her  face,  of  which  the  beauty  to-night  seemed 
lost  in  rigidity,  pale  and  stiff.  With  a  contraction  of  heart  he 
plunged  himself  into  the  conversation.  On  his  road  home  that 
evening  he  had  found  an  important  foreign  telegram  posted  up 
at  the  small  literary  club  to  which  he  had  belonged  since  Oxford 
days.  He  made  a  remark  about  it  now  to  Count  Wielandt ;  and 
the  diplomatist,  turning  rather  unwillingly  to  face  his  questioner, 
recognised  that  the  remark  was  a  shrewd  one. 


CHAP,  xxxin  ROSE  423 

Presently  the  young  man's  frank  intelligence  had  told.  On 
his  way  to  and  from  the  Holy  Land  three  years  before  Robert 
had  seen  something  of  the  East,  and  it  so  happened  that  he 
remembered  the  name  of  Count  Wielandt  as  one  of  the  foreign 
secretaries  of  legation  present  at  an  official  party  given  by  the 
English  Ambassador  at  Constantinople,  which  he  and  his  mother 
had  attended  on  their  return  journey,  in  virtue  of  a  family  con- 
nection with  the  Ambassador.  All  that  he  could  glean  from 
memory  he  made  quick  use  of  now.  urged  at  first  by  the  remorse- 
ful wish  to  make  this  new  world  into  which  he  had  brought 
Catherine  less  difficult  than  he  knew  it  must  have  been  during 
the  last  quarter  of  an  hour. 

But  alter  a  while  he  found  himself  leading  the  talk  of  a 
section  of  the  room,  and  getting  excitement  and  pleasure  out 
of  the  talk  itself.  Ever  since  that  Eastern  journey  he  had  kept 
an  eye  on  the  subjects  which  had  interested  him  then,  reading 
in  his  rapid  voracious  way  all  that  came  across  him  at  Mure- 
well,  especially  in  the  squire's  foreign  newspapers  and  reviews, 
and  storing  it  when  read  in  a  remarkable  memory. 

Catherine,  after  the  failure  of  some  conversational  attempts 
between  her  and  Madame  de  Netteville,  fell  to  watching  her 
husband  with  a  start  of  strangeness  and  surprise.  She  had 
scarcely  seen  him  at  Oxford  among  his  equals ;  and  she  had 
very  i-arely  been  present  at  his  talks  with  the  squire.  In  some 
ways,  and  owing  to  the  instinctive  reserves  set  up  between  them 
for  so  long,  her  intellectual  knowledge  of  him  was  very  imperfect. 
His  ease,  his  resource,  among  these  men  of  the  world,  for  whom 
— independent  of  all  else — she  felt  a  countrywoman's  dislike, 
filled  her  with  a  kind  of  bewilderment. 

'  Are  you  new  to  London  ? '  Lady  Aubrey  asked  her  presently, 
in  that  tone  of  absolute  detachment  from  the  person  addressed 
which  certain  women  manage  to  perfection.  She,  too,  had  been 
watching  the  husband,  and  the  sight  had  impressed  her  with  a 
momentary  curiosity  to  know  what  the  stiff,  handsome,  dowdily- 
dressed  wife  was  made  of. 

'  We  have  been  two  months  here,'  said  Catherine,  her  large 
gray  eyes  taking  in  her  companion's  very  bare  shoulders,  the 
costly  fantastic  dress,  and  the  diamonds  flashing  against  the 
white  skin. 

'  In  what  part  ? ' 

'  In  Bedford  Square.' 

Lady  Aubrey  was  silent.  She  had  no  ideas  on  the  subject  of 
Bedford  Square  at  command. 

'  We  are  very  central,'  said  Catherine,  feeling  desperately  that 
she  was  doing  Robert  no  credit  at  all,  and  anxious  to  talk  if  only 
something  could  be  found  to  talk  about. 

'  Oh  yes,  you  are  near  the  theatres,'  said  the  other  indiffer- 
ently. 

This  was  hardly  an  aspect  of  the  matter  which  had  yet 
occurred  to  Catherine.  A  flash  of  bitterness  ran  through  her. 


424  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

Had  they  left  their  Murewell  life  to  be  '  near  the  theatres,'  and 
kept  at  arm's  length  by  supercilious  great  ladies  ? 

'  We  are  very  far  from  the  Park,'  she  answered  with  an  effort. 
'  I  wish  we  weren't,  for  my  little  girl's  sake.' 

'  Oh,  you  have  a  little  girl !     How  old  ? ' 

'  Sixteen  months.' 

'Too  young  to  be  a  nuisance  yet.  Mine  are  just  old  enough 
to  be  in  everybody's  way.  Children  are  out  of  place  in  London. 
I  always  want  to  leave  mine  in  the  country,  but  my  husband 
objects,'  said  Lady  Aubrey  coolly.  There  was  a  certain  piquancy 
in  saying  frank  things  to  this  stiff  Madonna-faced  woman. 

Madame  de  Netteville,  meanwhile,  was  keeping  up  a  con- 
versation in  an  undertone  with  young  Evershed,  who  had  come 
to  sit  on  a  stool  beside  her,  and  was  gazing  up  at  her  with  eyes 
of  which  the  expression  was  perfectly  understood  by  several 
persons  present.  The  handsome,  dissipated,  ill-conditioned 

Smth  had  been  her  slave  and  shadow  for  the  last  two  years, 
is  devotion  now  no  longer  amused  her,  and  she  was  en- 
deavouring to  get  rid  of  it  and  of  him.  But  the  process  was  a 
difficult  one,  and  took  both  time  and  finesse. 

She  kept  her  eye,  notwithstanding,  on  the  new-comers  whom 
the  squire's  introduction  had  brought  to  her  that  night.  When 
the  Elsmeres  rose  to  go,  she  said  good-bye  to  Catherine  with  an 
excessive  politeness,  under  which  her  poor  guest,  conscious  of 
her  own  gaucherie  during  the  evening,  felt  the  touch  of  satire 
she  was  perhaps  meant  to  feel.  But  when  Catherine  was  well 
ahead  Madame  de  Netteville  gave  Eobert  one  of  her  most 
brilliant  smiles. 

'  Friday  evening,  Mr.  Elsmere ;  always  Fridays.  You  will 
remember  ? ' 

The  naivete  of  Robert's  social  view,  and  the  mobility  of  his 
temper,  made  him  easily  responsive.  He  had  just  enjoyed  half 
an  hour's  brilliant  talk  with  two  or  three  of  the  keenest  and 
most  accomplished  men  in  Europe.  Catherine  had  slipped  out 
of  his  sight  meanwhile,  and  the  impression  of  their  entree  had 
been  effaced.  He  made  Madame  de  Netteville,  therefore,  a 
cordial  smiling  reply  before  his  tall  slender  form  disappeared 
after  that  of  his  wife. 

'  Agreeable — rather  an  acquisition  ! '  said  Madame  de  Nette- 
ville to  Lady  Aubrey,  with  a  light  motion  of  the  head  towards 
Robert's  retreating  figure.  '  But  the  wife  !  Good  heavens  !  I 
owe  Roger  Wendover  a  grudge.  I  think  he  might  have  made 
it  plain  to  those  good  people  that  I  don't  want  strange  women 
at  my  Friday  evenings. 

Lady  Aubrey  laughed.  '  No  doubt  she  is  a  genius,  or  a  saint, 
in  mufti.  She  might  be  handsome  too  if  some  one  would  dress 
her.' 

Madame  de  Netteville  shrugged  her  shoulders.  '  Oh !  life 
is  not  long  enough  to  penetrate  that  kind  of  person,'  she  said. 

Meanwhile  the  '  person '  was  driving  homeward  very  sad  and 


CHAP,  xxxin  ROSE  425 

ill  at  ease.  She  was  vexed  that  she  had  not  done  better,  and 
yet  she  was  wounded  by  Robert's  enjoyment.  The  Puritan  in 
her  blood  was  all  aflame.  As  she  sat  looking  into  the  motley 
lamplit  night,  she  could  have  'testified'  like  any  prophetess 
of  old. 

Robert  meanwhile,  his  hand  slipped  into  hers,  was  thinking 
of  Wielandt's  talk,  and  of  some  racy  stories  of  Berlin  celebrities 
told  by  a  young  attach^  who  had  joined  their  group.  His  lips 
were  lightly  smiling,  his  brow  serene. 

But  as  he  helped  her  down  from  the  cab,  and  they  stood  in 
the  hall  together,  he  noticed  the  pale  discomposure  of  her 
looks.  Instantly  the  familiar  dread  and  pain  returned  upon 
him. 

'  Did  you  like  it,  Catherine  ? '  he  asked  her,  with  something 
like  timidity,  as  they  stood  together  by  their  bedroom  fire. 

She  sank  into  a  low  chair  and  sat  a  moment  staring  at  the 
blaze.  He  was  startled  by  her  look  of  suffering,  and,  kneeling, 
he  put  his  arms  tenderly  round  her. 

'  Oh,  Robert,  Robert ! '  she  cried,  falling  on  his  neck. 

'  What  is  it  ? '  he  asked,  kissing  her  hair. 

'  I  seem  all  at  sea,'  she  said  in  a  choked  voice,  her  face  hidden, 
-'  the  old  landmarks  swallowed  up  !  I  am  always  judging  ana 
condemning, — always  protesting.  What  am  I  that  I  should 
judge  ?  But  how — how — can  I  help  it  ? ' 

She  drew  herself  away  from  him,  once  more  looking  into  the 
fire  with  drawn  brows. 

'Darling,  the  world  is  full  of  difference.  Men  and  women 
take  life  in  different  ways.  Don't  be  so  sure  yours  is  the  only 
right  one.' 

He  spoke  with  a  moved  gentleness,  taking  her  hand  the 
while. 

' "  This  is  the  way,  walk  ye  in  it ! " '  she  said  presently,  with 
strong,  almost  stern  emphasis.  'Oh,  those  women,  and  that 
talk!  Hateful!' 

He  rose  and  looked  down  on  her  from  the  mantelpiece. 
Within  him  was  a  movement  of  impatience,  repressed  almost  at 
once  by  the  thought  of  that  long  night  at  Murewell,  when  he 
had  vowed  to  himself  to  '  make  amends ' ! 

And  if  that  memory  had  not  intervened  she  would  still  have 
disarmed  him  wholly. 

'  Listen  ! '  she  said  to  him  suddenly,  her  eyes  kindling  with  a 
strange  childish  pleasure.  'Do  you  hear  the  wind,  the  west 
wind  1  Do  you  remember  how  it  used  to  shake  the  house,  how- 
it  used  to  come  sweeping  through  the  trees  in  the  wood-path  ? 
It  must  be  trying  the  study  window  now,  blowing  the  vine 
against  it.' 

A  yearning  passion  breathed  through  every  feature.  It 
seemed  to  him  she  saw  nothing  before  her.  Her  longing  soul 
was  back  in  the  old  haunts,  surrounded  by  the  old  loved  forms 
and  sounds.  It  went  to  his  heart.  He  tried  to  soothe  her  with 


426  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

the  tenderest  words  remorseful  love  could  find.  But  the  con- 
flict of  feeling — grief,  rebellion,  doubt,  self -judgment — would 
not  be  soothed,  and  long  after  she  had  made  him  leave  her  and 
he  had  fallen  asleep,  she  knelt  on,  a  white  and  rigid  figure  in 
the  dying  firelight,  the  wind  shaking  the  old  house,  the  eternal 
murmur  of  London  booming  outside. 


CHAPTEK  XXXIV 

MEANWHILE,  as  if  to  complete  the  circle  of  pain  with  which 
poor  Catherine's  life  was  compassed,  it  began  to  be  plain  to  her 
that,  in  spite  of  the  hard  and  mocking  tone  Rose  generally 
adopted  with  regard  to  him,  Edward  Langham  was  constantly 
at  the  house  in  Lerwick  Gardens,  and  that  it  was  impossible  he 
should  be  there  so  much  unless  in  some  way  or  other  Rose 
encouraged  it. 

The  idea  of  such  a  marriage — nay,  of  such  a  friendship — was 
naturally  as  repugnant  as  ever  to  her.  It  had  been  one  of  the 
bitterest  moments  of  a  bitter  time  when,  at  their  first  meeting 
after  the  crisis  in  her  life,  Langham,  conscious  of  a  sudden 
movement  of  pity  for  a  woman  he  disliked,  had  pressed  the 
hand  she  held  put  to  him  in  a  way  which  clearly  showed  her 
what  was  in  his  mind,  and  had  then  passed  on  to  chat  and 
smoke  with  Robert  in  the  study,  leaving  her  behind  to  realise 
the  gulf  that  lay  between  the  present  and  that  visit  of  his  to 
Murewell,  when  Robert  and  she  had  felt  in  unison  towards  him, 
his  opinions,  and  his  conduct  to  Rose,  as  towards  everything 
else  of  importance  in  their  life. 

Now  it  seemed  to  her  Robert  must  necessarily  look  at  the 
matter  differently,  and  she  could  not  make  up  her  mind  to  talk 
to  him  about  it.  In  reality,  his  objections  had  never  had  the 
same  basis  as  hers,  and  he  would  have  given  her  as  strong  a 
support  as  ever,  if  she  had  asked  for  it.  But  she  held  her  peace, 
and  he,  absorbed  in  other  things,  took  no  notice.  Besides,  he 
knew  Langham  too  well.  He  had  never  been  able  to  take 
Catherine's  alarms  seriously. 

An  attentive  onlooker,  however;  would  have  admitted  that 
this  time,  at  any  rate,  they  had  their  justification.  Why  Lang- 
ham  was  so  much  in  the  Leyburns'  drawing-room  during  these 
winter  months  was  a  question  that  several  people  asked — him- 
self not  least.  He  had  not  only  pretended  to  forget  Rose 
Leyburn  during  the  eighteen  months  which  had  passed  since 
their  first  acquaintance  at  Murewell — he  had  for  all  practical 
purposes  forgotten  her.  It  is  only  a  small  proportion  of  men 
and  women  who  are  capable  of  passion  on  the  great  scale  at  all ; 
and  certainly,  as  we  have  tried  to  show,  Langham  was  not 
among  them.  He  had  had  a  passing  moment  of  excitement  at 
Murewell,  soon  put  down,  and  followed  by  a  week  of  extremely 


CHAP,  xxxiv  ROSE  427 

pleasant  sensations,  which,  like  most  of  his  pleasures,  had  ended 
in  reaction  and  self -abhorrence.  He  had  left  Murewell  remorse- 
ful, melancholy,  and  ill  at  ease,  but  conscious,  certainly,  of  a 
great  relief  that  he  and  Rose  Ley  burn  were  not  likely  to  meet 
again  for  long. 

Then  his  settlement  in  London  had  absorbed  him,  as  all  such 
matters  absorb  men  who  have  become  the  slaves  of  their  own 
solitary  habits,  and  in  the  joy  of  his  new  freedom,  and  the  fresh 
zest  for  learning  it  had  aroused  in  him,  the  beautiful  unman- 
ageable child  who  had  disturbed  his  peace  at  Murewell  was  not 
likely  to  be  more,  but  less,  remembered.  When  he  stumbled 
across  her  unexpectedly  in  the  National  Gallery,  his  determin- 
ing impulse  had  oeen  merely  one  of  flight. 

However,  as  he  had  written  to  Robert  towards  the  beginning 
of  his  London  residence,  there  was  no  doubt  that  his  migration 
had  made  him  for  the  time  much  more  human,  observant,  and 
accessible.  Oxford  had  become  to  him  a.n  oppression  and  a 
nightmare,  and  as  soon  as  he  had  turned  his  oack  on  it  his 
mental  lungs  seemed  once  more  to  fill  with  air.  He  took  his 
modest  part  in  the  life  of  the  capital ;  happy  in  the  obscurity 
afforded  him  by  the  crowd ;  rejoicing  in  the  thought  that  his 
life  and  his  affairs  were  once  more  his  own,  and  the  academical 
yoke  had  been  slipped  for  ever. 

It  was  in  this  mood  of  greater  cheerfulness  and  energy  that 
his  fresh  sight  of  Rose  found  him.  For  the  moment,  he  was 
perhaps  more  susceptible  than  he  ever  could  have  been  before 
to  her  young  perfections,  her  beauty,  her  brilliancy,  her  provok- 
ing stimulating  ways.  Certainly,  from  that  first  afternoon  on- 
wards he  became  more  and  more  restless  to  watch  her,  to  be 
near  her,  to  see  what  she  made  of  herself  and  her  gifts.  In 
general,  though  it  was  certainly  owing  to  her  that  he  came  so 
much,  she  took  small  notice  of  him.  He  regarded,  or  chose  to 
regard,  himself  as  a  mere  'item' — something  systematically 
overlooked  and  forgotten  in  the  bustle  of  her  days  and  nights. 
He  saw  that  she  thought  badly  of  him,  that  the  friendship  he 
might  have  had  was  now  proudly  refused  him,  that  their  first 
week  together  had  left  a  deep  impression  of  resentment  and 
hostility  in  her  mind.  And  all  the  same  he  came ;  and  she 
asked  him  !  And  sometimes,  after  an  hour  when  she  had  been 
more  difficult  or  more  satirical  than  usual,  ending  notwithstand- 
ing with  a  little  change  of  tone,  a  careless  '  You  will  find  us 
next  Wednesday  as  usual ;  So-and-so  is  coming  to  play,'  Lang- 
ham  would  walk  home  in  a  state  of  feeling  he  did  not  care  to 
analyse,  but  which  certainly  quickened  the  pace  of  life  a  good 
deal.  She  would  not  let  him  try  his  luck  at  friendship  again, 
but  in  the  strangest  slightest  ways  did  she  not  make  him  sus- 
pect every  now  and  then  that  he  was  in  some  sort  important  to 
her,  that  he  sometimes  preoccupied  her  against  her  will ;  that 
her  will,  indeed,  sometimes  escaped  her,  and  failed  to  control 
her  manner  to  him  ? 


428  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

It  was.  not  only  his  relations  to  the  beauty,  however,  his 
interest  in  her  career,  or  his  perpetual  consciousness  of  Mrs. 
Elsmere's  cold  dislike  and  disapproval  of  his  presence  in 
her  mother's  drawing-room,  that  accounted  for  Langham's 
heightened  mental  temperature  this  winter.  The  existence 
and  the  proceedings  of  Mr.  Hugh  Flaxman  had  a  very  con- 
siderable share  in  it. 

'Tell  me  about  Mr.  Langham,'  said  Mr.  Flaxman  once  to 
Agnes  Leyburn,  in  the  early  days  of  his  acquaintance  with  the 
family :'  is  he  an  old  friend  ? ' 

'  Of  Robert's,'  replied  Agnes,  her  cheerful  impenetrable  look 
fixed  upon  the  speaker.  '  My  sister  met  him  once  for  a  week  in 
the  country  at  the  Elsmeres'.  My  mother  and  I  have  been  only 
just  introduced  to  him.' 

Hugh  Flaxman  pondered  the  information  a  little. 

'Does  he  strike  you  as — well — what  shall  we  say? — un- 
usual ? ' 

His  smile  struck  one  out  of  her. 

'  Even  Robert  might  admit  that,'  she  said  demurely. 

'Is  Elsmere  so  attached  to  him  ?  I  own  I  was  provoked  just 
now  by  his  tone  about  Elsmere.  I  was  remarking  on  the  evi- 
dent physical  and  mental  strain  your  brother-in-law  had  gone 
through,  and  he  said  with  a  nonchalance  I  cannot  convey  :  "  Yes, 
it  is  astonishing  Elsmere  should  have  ventured  it.  I  confess  I 
often  wonder  whether  it  was  worth  while."  "Why?"  said  I, 
perhaps  a  little  hotly.  Well,  he  didn't  know — wouldn't  say. 
But  I  gathered  that,  according  to  him,  Elsmere  is  still  swathed 
in  such  an  unconscionable  amount  of  religion  that  the  few  rags 
and  patches  he  has  got  rid  of  are  hardly  worth  the  discomfort 
of  the  change.  It  seemed  to  me  the  tone  of  the  very  cool 
spectator,  rather  than  the  friend.  However — does  your  sister 
like  him?' 

'  I  don't  know,'  said  Agnes,  looking  her  questioner  full  in  the 
face. 

Hugh  Flaxman's  fair  complexion  flushed  a  little.  He  got  up 
to  go. 

'  He  is  one  of  the  most  extraordinarily  handsome  persons  I 
ever  saw,'  he  remarked  as  he  buttoned  up  his  coat.  '  Don't  you 
think  so  ? ' 

'Yes,'  said  Agnes  dubiously,  'if  he  didn't  stoop,  and  if  he 
didn't  in  general  look  half -asleep.' 

Hugh  Flaxman  departed  more  puzzled  than  ever  as  to  the 
reason  for  the  constant  attendance  of  this  uncomfortable  anti- 
social person  at  the  Leyburns'  house.  Being  himself  a  man  of 
very  subtle  and  fastidious  tastes,  he  could  imagine  that  _  so 
original  a  suitor,  with  such  eyes,  such  an  intellectual  reputation 
so  well  sustained  by  scantiness  of  speech  and  the  most  pictur- 
esque capacity  for  silence,  might  have  attractions  for  a  roman- 
tic and  wilful  girl.  But  where  were  the  signs  of  it?  Rose 
rarely  talked  to  him,  and  was  always  ready  to  make  him  the 


CHAP,  xxx rv  ROSE  429 

target  of  a  sub-acid  raillery.  Agnes  was  clearly  indifferent  to 
him,  and  Mrs.  Leyburn  equally  clearly  afraid  of  him.  Mrs. 
Elsmere,  too,  seemed  to  dislike  him,  and  yet  there  he  was,  week 
after  week.  Flaxman  could  not  make  it  out. 

Then  he  tried  to  explore  the  man  himself.  He  started 
various  topics  with  him — University  reform,  politics,  music. 
In  vain.  In  his  most  characteristic  Oxford  days  Langham  had 
never  assumed  a  more  wholesale  ignorance  or  all  subjects  in 
heaven  and  earth,  and  never  stuck  more  pertinaciously  to  the 
flattest  forms  of  commonplace.  Flaxman  walked  away  at  last 
boiling  over.  The  man  of  parts  masquerading  as  the  fool  is 
perhaps  at  least  as  exasperating  as  the  fool  playing  at  wisdom. 

However,  he  was  not  the  only  person  irritated.  After  one  of 
these  fragments  of  conversation  Langham  also  walked  rapidly 
home  in  a  state  of  most  irrational  petulance,  his  hands  thrust 
with  energy  into  the  pockets  of  his  overcoat. 

'  No,  my  successful  aristocrat,  you  shall  not  have  everything 
your  own  way  so  easily  with  me  or  with  her  1  You  may  break 
me,  but  you  shall  not  play  upon  me.  And  as  for  her,  I  will  see 
it  out — I  will  see  it  out ! ' 

And  he  stiffened  himself  as  he  walked,  feeling  life  electric  all 
about  him,  and  a  strange  new  force  tingling  in  every  vein. 

Meanwhile,  however,  Mr.  Flaxman  was  certainly  having  a 
good  deal  of  his  own  way.  Since  the  moment  when  his  aunt, 
Lady  Charlotte,  had  introduced  him  to  Miss  Leyburn — watch- 
ing him  the  while  with  a  half -smile  which  soon  broadened  into 
one  of  sly  triumph — Hugh  Flaxman  had  persuaded  himself  that 
country  houses  are  intolerable  even  in  the  shooting  season,  and 
that  London  is  the  only  place  of  residence  during  the  winter  for 
the  man  who  aspires  to  govern  his  life  on  principles  of  reason. 
Through  his  influence  and  that  of  his  aunt,  Rose  and  Agnes — 
Mrs.  Leyburn  never  went  out — were  being  carried  into  all  the 
high  life  that  London  can  supply  in  November  and  January. 
Wealthy,  high-born,  and  popular,  he  was  gradually  devoting  his 
advantages  in  the  freest  way  to  Rose's  service.  He  was  an 
excellent  musical  amateur,  and  he  was  always  proud  to  play 
with  her ;  he  had  a  fine  country  house,  and  the  little  rooms  on 
Campden  Hill  were  almost  always  filled  with  flowers  from  his 
gardens ;  he  had  a  famous  musical  library,  and  its  treasures 
were  lavished  on  the  girl  violinist ;  he  had  a  singularly  wide 
circle  of  friends,  and  with  his  whimsical  energy  he  was  soon 
inclined  to  make  kindness  to  the  two  sisters  the  one  test  of  a 
friend's  goodwill. 

He  was  clearly  touched  by  Rose ;  and  what  was  to  prevent 
his  making  an  impression  on  her  ?  To  her  sex  he  had  always 
been  singularly  attractive.  Like  his  sister,  he  had  all  sorts  of 
bright  impulses  and  audacities  flashing  and  darting  about  him. 
He  had  a  certain  hauteur  with  men,  and  could  play  the  aris- 
tocrat when  he  pleased,  for  all  his  philosophical  radicalism.  But 
with  women  he  was  the  most  delightful  mixture  of  deference 


430  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK,  v 

and  high  spirits.  He  loved  the  grace  of  them,  the  daintiness  of 
their  dress,  the  softness  of  their  voices.  He  would  have  done 
anything  to  please  them,  anything  to  save  them  pain.  At 
twenty -five,  when  he  was  still  '  Citizen  Flaxman '  to  his  college 
friends,  and  in  the  first  fervours  of  a  poetic  defiance  of  prejudice 
and  convention,  he  had  married  a  gamekeeper's  pretty  daughter. 
She  had  died  with  her  child — died,  almost,  poor  thing !  of 
happiness  and  excitement — of  the  over-greatness  of  Heaven's 
boon  to  her.  Flaxman  had  adored  her,  and  death  had  tenderly 
embalmed  a  sentiment  to  which  life  might  possibly  have  been 
less  kind.  Since  then  he  had  lived  in  music,  letters,  and  society, 
refusing  out  of  a  certain  fastidiousness  to  enter  politics,  but 
welcomed  and  considered,  wherever  he  went,  tall,  good-looking, 
distinguished,  one  of  the  most  agreeable  and  courted  of  men, 
and  perhaps  the  richest  parti  in  London. 

Still,  in  spite  of  it  aU,  Langham  held  his  ground — Langham 
would  see  it  out !  And  indeed  Flaxman's  footing  with  the 
beauty  was  by  no  means  clear — least  of  all  to  himself.  She 
evidently  liked  him,  but  she  bantered  him  a  good  deal;  she 
would  not  be  the  least  subdued  or  dazzled  by  his  birth  and 
wealth,  or  by  those  of  his  friends ;  and  if  she  allowed  him  to 
provide  her  with  pleasures,  she  would  hardly  ever  take  his 
advice,  or  knowingly  consult  his  tastes. 

Meanwhile  she  tormented  them  both  a  good  deal  by  the 
artistic  acquaintance  she  gathered  about  her.  Mrs.  Pierson's 
world,  as  we  have  said,  contained  a  good  many  dubious  odds 
and  ends,  and  she  had  handed  them  all  over  to  Rose.  The  Ley- 
burns'  growing  intimacy  with  Mr.  Flaxman  and  his  circle,  and 
through  them  with  the  finer  types  of  the  artistic  life,  would 
naturally  and  by  degrees  have  carried  them  away  somewhat 
from  this  earlier  circle  if  Rose  would  have  allowed  it.  But  she 
clung  persistently  to  its  most  unpromising  specimens,  partly 
out  of  a  natural  generosity  of  feeling,  but  partly  also  for  the 
sake  of  that  opposition  her  soul  loved,  her  poor  prickly  soul,  full 
under  all  her  gaiety  and  indifference  of  the  most  desperate  doubt 
and  soreness, — opposition  to  Catherine,  opposition  to  Mr.  Flax- 
man, but,  above  all,  opposition  to  Langham. 

Flaxman  could  often  avenge  himself  on  her — or  rather  on  the 
more  obnoxious  members  of  her  following — by  dint  of  a  faculty 
for  light  and  stinging  repartee  which  would  send  her,  flushed 
and  biting  her  lip,  to  have  her  laugh  out  in  private.  But 
Langham  for  a  long  time  was  defenceless.  Many  of  her  friends 
in  his  opinion  were  simply  pathological  curiosities — their 
vanity  was  so  frenzied,  their  sensibilities  so  morbidly  developed. 
He  felt  a  doctor's  interest  in  them  coupled  with  more  than  a 
doctor's  scepticism  as  to  all  they  had  to  say  about  themselves. 
But  Rose  would  invite  them,  would  assume  a  quasi- intimacy 
with  them  ;  and  Langham  as  well  as  everybody  else  had  to  put 
up  with  it. 

Even  the  trodden  worm,  however And  there  came  n 


CHAP,  xxxiv  ROSE  431 

time  when  the  concentration  of  a  good  many  different  lines  of 
feeling  in  Langham's  mind  betrayed  itself  at  last  in  a  sharp 
and  sudden  openness.  It  began  to  seem  to  him  that  she  was 
specially  bent  often  on  tormenting  him  by  these  caprices  of 
hers,  and  he  vowed  to  himself  finally,  with  an  outburst  of  irrita- 
tion due  in  reality  to  a  hundred  causes,  that  he  would  assert 
himself,  that  he  would  make  an  effort  at  any  rate  to  save  her 
from  her  own  follies. 

One  afternoon,  at  a  crowded  musical  party,  to  which  he  had 
come  much  against  his  will,  and  only  in  obedience  to  a  compul- 
sion he  dared  not  analyse,  she  asked  him  in  passing  if  he  would 
kindly  find  Mr.  MacFadden,  a  bass  singer,  whose  name  stood 
next  on  the  programme,  and  who  was  not  to  be  seen  in  the 
drawing-room. 

Langham  searched  the  dining-room  and  the  hall,  and  at  last 
found  Mr.  MacFadden — a  fair,  flabby,  unwholesome  youth — in 
the  little  study  or  cloak-room,  in  a  state  of  collapse,  flanked  by 
whisky  and  water,  and  attended  by  two  frightened  maids,  who 
handed  over  their  charge  to  Langham  and  fled. 

Then  it  appeared  that  the  great  man  had  been  offended  by  a 
change  in  the  programme,  which  hurt  his  vanity,  had  withdrawn 
from  the  drawing-room  on  the  brink  of  hysterics,  had  called  for 
spirits,  which  had  been  provided  for  him  with  great  difficulty 
by  Mrs.  Leyburn's  maids,  and  was  there  drinking  himself  into 
a  state  of  rage  and  rampant  dignity  which  would  soon  have 
shown-  itself  in  a  melodramatic  return  to  the  drawing-room, 
and  a  public  refusal  to  sing  at  all  in  a  house  where  art  had 
been  outraged  in  his  person. 

Some  of  the  old  disciplinary  instincts  of  the  Oxford  tutor 
awoke  in  Langham  at  the  sight  of  the  creature,  and,  with  a 
prompt  sternness  which  amazed  himself,  and  nearly  set  Mac- 
Fadden whimpering,  he  got  rid  of  the  man,  shut  the  hall  door 
on  him,  and  went  back  to  the  drawing-room. 

'  Well  ? '  said  Rose  in  anxiety,  coming  up  to  him. 

'  I  have  sent  him  away,'  he  said  briefly,  an  eye  of  unusual 
quickness  and  brightness  looking  down  upon  her;  'he  was  in 
no  condition  to  sing.  He  chose  to  be  offended,  apparently, 
because  he  was  put  out  of  his  turn,  and  has  been  giving  the 
servants  trouble. 

Rose  flushed  deeply,  and  drew  herself  up  with  a  look  half 
trouble,  half  defiance,  at  Langham. 

'  I  trust  you  will  not  ask  him  again,'  he  said,  with  the  same 
decision.  'And  if  I  might  say  so  there  are  one  or  two  people 
still  here  whom  I  should  like  to  see  you  exclude  at  the  same  time.' 

They  had  withdrawn  into  the  bow  window  out  of  earshot 
of  the  rest  of  the  room.  Langham's  look  turned  significantly 
towards  a  group  near  the  piano.  It  contained  one  or  two  men 
whom  he  regarded  as  belonging  to  a  low  type ;  men  who,  if  it 
suited  their  purpose,  would  be  quite  ready  to  tell  or  invent 
malicious  stories  of  the  girl  they  were  now  flattering,  and  whose 


432  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  \ 

standards  and  instincts  represented  a  coarser  world  than  Rose 
in  reality  knew  anything  about. 

Her  eyes  followed  his. 

'  I  know,'  she  said  petulantly,  '  that  you  dislike  artists.  They 
are  not  your  world.  They  are  mine.' 

'  I  dislike  artists  ?  What  nonsense,  too  !  To  me  personally 
these  men's  ways  don't  matter  in  the  least.  They  go  their  road 
and  I  mine.  But  I  deeply  resent  any  danger  of  discomfort  and 
annoyance  to  you  ! ' 

He  still  stood  frowning,  a  glow  of  indignant  energy  showing 
itself  in  his  attitude,  his  glance.  She  could  not  know  that  he 
was  at  that  moment  vividly  realising  the  drunken  scene  that 
might  have  taken  place  in  her  presence  if  he  had  not  succeeded 
in  getting  that  man  safely  out  of  the  house.  But  she  felt  that 
he  was  angry,  and  mostly  angry  with  her,  and  there  was  some- 
thing so  piquant  and  unexpected  in  his  anger  ! 

'  I  am  afraid,'  she  said,  with  a  queer  sudden  submissiveness, 
'  you  have  been  going  through  something  very  disagreeable.  I 
am  very  sorry.  Is  it  my  fault  1 '  she  added,  with  a  whimsical 
flash  of  eye,  half  fun,  half  serious. 

He  could  hardly  believe  his  ears. 

'  Yes,  it  is  your  fault,  I  think  ! '  he  answered  her,  amazed  at 
his  own  boldness.  '  Not  that  /  was  annoyed — Heavens  !  what 
does  that  matter? — but  that  you  and  your  mother  and  sister 
were  very  near  an  unpleasant  scene.  You  will  not  take  advice, 
Miss  Ley  burn, — you  will  take  your  own  way  in  spite  of  what 
any  one  else  can  say  or  hint  to  you,  and  some  day  you  will  expose 
yourself  to  annoyance  when  there  is  no  one  near  to  protect 
you  ! ' 

'  Well,  if  so,  it  won't  be  for  want  of  a  mentor,'  she  said,  drop- 
ping him  a  mock  curtsey.  But  her  lip  trembled  under  its 
smile,  and  her  tone  had  not  lost  its  gentleness. 

At  this  moment  Mr.  Flaxman,  who  had  gradually  established 
himself  as  the  joint  leader  of  these  musical  afternoons,  came 
forward  to  summon  Rose  to  a  quartette.  He  looked  from  one 
to  the  other,  a  little  surprise  penetrating  through  his  suavity 
of  manner. 

'  Am  I  interrupting  you  ? ' 

'  Not  at  all,'  said  Rose  ;  then,  turning  back  to  Langham,  she 
said  in  a  hurried  whisper :  '  Don't  say  anything  about  the 
wretched  man ;  it  would  make  mamma  nervous.  He  shan't 
come  here  again.' 

Mr.  Flaxman  waited  till  the  whisper  was  over,  and  then  led 
her  off,  with  a  change  of  manner  which  she  immediately  per- 
ceived, and  which  lasted  for  the  rest  of  the  evening. 

Langham  went  home,  and  sat  brooding  over  the  fire.  Her 
voice  had  not  been  so  kind,  her  look  so  womanly,  for  months. 
Had  she  been  reading  Shirley,  and  would  she  have  liked  him 
to  play  Louis  Moore  1  He  went  into  a  fit  of  silent  convulsive 
laughter  as  the  idea  occurred  to  him. 


CHAP,  xxxiv  ROSE  433 

Some  secret  instinct  made  him  keep  away  from  her  for  a 
time.  At  last,  one  Friday  afternoon,  as  he  emerged  from  the 
Museum,  where  he  had  been  collating  the  MSS.  of  some  obscure 
Alexandrian,  the  old  craving  returned  with  added  strength, 
and  he  turned  involuntarily  westward. 

An  acquaintance  of  his,  recently  made  in  the  course  of  work 
at  the  Museum,  a  young  Russian  professor,  ran  after  him,  and 
walked  with  him.  Presently  they  passed  a  poster  on  the  wall, 
which  contained  in  enormous  letters  the  announcement  01 
Madame  Desforets's  approaching  visit  to  London,  a  list  of  plays, 
and  the  dates  of  performances. 

The  young  Russian  suddenly  stopped  and  stood  pointing  at 
the  advertisement,  with  shaking  derisive  finger,  his  eyes  aflame, 
the  whole  man  quivering  with  what  looked  like  antagonism  and 
hate. 

Then  he  broke  into  a  fierce  flood  of  French.  Langham 
listened  till  they  had  passed  Piccadilly,  passed  the  Park,  and 
till  the  young  savant  turned  southwards  towards  his  Brompton 
lodgings. 

Then  Langham  slowly  climbed  Campden  Hill,  meditating. 
His  thoughts  were  an  odd  mixture  of  the  things  he  had  just 
heard,  and  of  a  scene  at  Murewell  long  ago  when  a  girl  had 
denounced  him  for  '  calumny.' 

At  the  door  of  Lerwick  Gardens  he  was  informed  that  Mrs. 
Leyburn  was  upstairs  with  an  attack  of  bronchitis.  But  the 
servant  thought  the  young  ladies  were  at  home.  Would  he 
come  in?  He  stood  irresolute  a  moment,  then  went  in  on  a 
pretext  of  '  inquiry.' 

The  maid  threw  open  the  drawing-room  door,  and  there  was 
Rose  sitting  well  into  the  fire — for  it  was  a  raw  February  after- 
noon— with  a  book. 

She  received  him  with  all  her  old  hard  brightness.  He  was, 
indeed,  instantly  sorry  that  he  had  made  his  way  in.  Tyrant ! 
was  she  displeased  because  he  had  slipped  his  chain  for  rather 
longer  than  usual  ? 

However,  he  sat  down,  delivered  his  book,  and  they  talked 
first  about  her  mother's  illness.  They  had  been  anxious,  she 
said,  but  the  doctor,  who  had  just  taken  his  departure,  had  now 
completely  reassured  them. 

'  Then  you  will  be  able  probably  after  all  to  put  in  an  ap- 
pearance at  Lady  Charlotte  s  this  evening  ? '  he  asked  her. 

The  omnivorous  Lady  Charlotte  of  course  had  made  acquaint- 
ance with  him  in  the  Leyburns'  drawing-room,  as  she  did  with 
everybody  who  crossed  her  path,  and  three  days  before  he  had 
received  a  card  from  her  for  this  evening. 

'  Oh  yes  !  But  I  have  had  to  miss  a  rehearsal  this  afternoon. 
That  concert  at  Searle  House  is  becoming  a  great  nuisance.' 

'  It  will  be  a  brilliant  affair,  I  suppose.  Princes  on  one  side 
of  you — and  Albani  on  the  other.  I  see  they  have  given  you 
the  most  conspicuous  part  as  violinist.' 

2F 


434  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

'Yes,'  she  said  with  a  little  satirical  tightening  of  the  lip. 
1  Yes — I  suppose  I  ought  to  be  much  flattered.' 

'  Of  course,'  he  said,  smiling,  but  embarrassed.  '  To  many 
people  you  must  be  at  this  moment  one  of  the  most  enviable 
persons  in  the  world.  A  delightful  art — and  every  opportunity 
to  make  it  tell ! ' 

There  was  a  pause.     She  looked  into  the  fire. 

'  I  don't  know  whether  it  is  a  delightful  art,'  she  said  pre- 
sently, stifling  a  little  yawn.  '  I  believe  I  am  getting  very 
tired  of  London.  Sometimes  I  think  I  shouldn't  be  very  sorry 
to  find  myself  suddenly  spirited  back  to  Burwood  ! ' 

Langham  gave  vent  to  some  incredulous  interjection.  He 
had  apparently  surprised  her  in  a  fit  of  ennui  which  was  rare 
with  her. 

'  Oh  no,  not  yet ! '  she  said  suddenly,  with  a  return  of  anima- 
tion. '  Madame  Desforets  comes  next  week,  and  I  am  to  see 
her.'  She  drew  herself  up  and  turned  a  beaming  face  upon  him. 
Was  there  a  shaft  of  mischief  in  her  eye  ?  He  could  not  tell. 
The  firelight  was  perplexing. 

'  You  are  to  see  her  1 '  he  said  slowly.  '  Is  she  coming 
here?' 

'  I  hope  so.  Mrs.  Pierson  is  to  bring  her.  I  want  mamma  to 
have  the  amusement  of  seeing  her.  My  artistic  friends  are  a 
kind  of  tonic  to  her — they  excite  her  so  much.  She  regards 
them  as  a  sort  of  show — much  as  you  do,  in  fact,  only  in  a  more 
charitable  fashion.' 

But  he  took  no  notice  of  what  she  was  saying. 

'  Madame  Desforets  is  coming  here  1 '  he  sharply  repeated, 
bending  forward,  a  curious  accent  in  his  tone. 

'  Yes  ! '  she  replied,  with  apparent  surprise.  Then  with  a  care- 
less smile :  '  Oh,  I  remember  when  we  were  at  Murewell,  you 
were  exercised  that  we  should  know  her.  Well,  Mr.  Langham, 
I  told  you  then  that  you  were  only  echoing  unworthy  gossip. 
I  am  in  the  same  mind  still.  I  have  seen  her,  and  you  haven  t. 
To  me  she  is  the  greatest  actress  in  the  world,  and  an  ill-used 
woman  to  boot ! ' 

Her  tone  had  warmed  with  every  sentence.  It  struck  him 
that  she  had  wilfully  brought  up  the  topic — that  it  gave  her 
pleasure  to  quarrel  with  him. 

He  put  down  his  hat  deliberately,  got  up,  and  stood  with  his 
back  to  the  fire.  She  looked  up  at  him  curiously.  But  the  dark 
regular  face  was  almost  hidden  from  her. 

'  It  is  strange,'  he  said  slowly, '  very  strange — that  you  should 
have  told  me  this  at  this  moment !  Miss  Leyburn,  a  great  deal 
of  the  truth  about  Madame  Desforets  I  could  neither  tell,  nor 
could  you  hear.  There  are  charges  against  her  proved  in  open 
court,  again  and  again,  which  I  could  not  even  mention  in  your 
presence.  But  one  thing  I  can  speak  of.  Do  you  know  the 
story  of  the  sister  at  St.  Petersburg  ? ' 

'I  know  no  stories  against  Madame  Desforets,'  said  Rose 


CHAP,  xxxiv  ROSE  435 

loftily,  her  quickened  breath  responding  to  the  energy  of  his 
tone.  '  I  have  always  chosen  not  to  know  them.' 

'  The  newspapers  were  full  of  this  particular  story  just  before 
Christmas.  I  should  have  thought  it  must  have  reached  you.' 

'  I  did  not  see  it,'  she  replied  stiffly ;  '  and  I  cannot  see  what 
good  purpose  is  to  be  served  by  your  repeating  it  to  me,  Mr. 
Langham.' 

Langham  could  have  smiled  at  her  petulance,  if  he  had  not 
for  once  been  determined  and  in  earnest. 

'  You  will  let  me  tell  it,  I  hope  ? '  he  said  quietly.  '  I  will  tell 
it  so  that  it  shall  not  offend  your  ears.  As  it  happens,  I  myself 
thought  it  incredible  at  the  time.  But,  by  an  odd  coincidence, 
it  has  just  this  afternoon  been  repeated  to  me  by  a  man  who 
was  an  eyewitness  of  part  of  it.' 

Rose  was  silent.  Her  attitude  was  hauteur  itself,  but  she 
made  no  further  active  opposition. 

'  Three  months  ago,'  he  began,  speaking  with  some  difficulty, 
but  still  with  a  suppressed  force  of  feeling  which  amazed  his 
hearer,  '  Madame  Desforets  was  acting  in  St.  Petersburg.  She 
had  with  her  a  large  company,  and  amongst  them  her  own 
young  sister,  Elise  Homey,  a  girl  of  eighteen.  This  girl  had 
been  always  kept  away  from  Madame  Desforets  by  her  parents, 
who  had  never  been  sufficiently  consoled  by  their  eldest  daugh- 
ter's artistic  success  for  the  infamy  of  her  life.' 

Rose  started  indignantly.  Langham  gave  her  no  time  to 
speak. 

'  Elise  Romey,  however,  had  developed  a  passion  for  the  stage. 
Her  parents  were  respectable — and  you  know  young  girls  in 
France  are  brought  up  strictly.  She  knew  next  to  nothing  of 
her  sister's  escapades.  But  she  knew  that  she  was  held  to  be 
the  greatest  actress  in  Europe — the  photographs  in  the  shops 
told  her  that  she  was  beautiful.  She  conceived  a  romantic 
passion  for  the  woman  whom  she  had  last  seen  when  she  was  a 
child  of  five,  and  actuated  partly  by  this  hungry  affection, 
partly  by  her  own  longing  wish  to  become  an  actress,  she 
escaped  from  home  and  joined  Madame  Desforets  in  the  South 
of  1  ranee.  Madame  Desforets  seems  at  first  to  have  been 
pleased  to  have  her.  The  girl's  adoration  pleased  her  vanity. 
Her  presence  with  her  gave  her  new  opportunities  of  posing.  I 
believe,'  and  Langham  gave  a  little  dry  laugh,  'they  were 
photographed  together  at  Marseilles  with  their  arms  round  each 
other's  necks,  and  the  photograph  had  an  immense  success. 
However,  on  the  way  to  St.  Petersburg,  difficulties  arose.  Elise 
was  pretty,  in  a  blonde  childish  way,  and  she  caught  the  atten- 
tion of  the  jeune  premier  of  the  company,  a  man  — the  speaker 
became  somewhat  embarrassed — 'whom  Madame  Desforets 
seems  to  have  regarded  as  her  particular  property.  There  were 
scenes  at  different  towns  on  the  journey.  Elise  became  fright- 
ened— wanted  to  go  home.  But  the  elaer  sister,  having  begun 
tormenting  her,  seems  to  have  determined  to  keep  her  hold  on 


436  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

her,  as  a  cat  keeps  and  tortures  a  mouse — mainly  for  the  sake 
of  annoying  the  man  of  whom  she  was  jealous.  They  arrived 
at  St.  Petersburg  in  the  depth  of  winter.  The  girl  was  worn 
out  with  travelling,  unhappy,  and  ilL  One  night  in  Madame 
Desforets's  apartment  there  was  a  supper  party,  and  after  it  a 
horrible  quarrel.  No  one  exactly  knows  what  happened.  But 
towards  twelve  o'clock  that  night  Madame  Desforets  turned  her 
young  sister  in  evening  dress,  a  light  shawl  round  her,  out  into 
the  snowy  streets  of  St.  Petersburg,  barred  the  door  behind  her, 
and  revolver  in  hand  dared  the  wretched  man  who  had  caused 
the  fracas  to  follow  her.' 

Rose  sat  immovable.  She  had  grown  pale,  but  the  firelight 
was  not  revealing. 

Langham  turned  away  from  her  towards  the  blaze,  holding 
out  his  hands  to  it  mechanically. 

'The  poor  child,'  he  said,  after  a  pause,  in  a  lower  voice, 
'  wandered  about  for  some  hours.  It  was  a  frightful  night — the 
great  capital  was  quite  strange  to  her.  She  was  insulted — fled 
this  way  and  that — grew  benumbed  with  cold  and  terror,  and 
was  found  unconscious  in  the  early  morning  under  the  archway 
of  a  house  some  two  miles  from  her  sister's  lodgings.' 

There  was  a  dead  silence.  Then  Rose  drew  a  long  quivering 
breath. 

'  I  do  not  believe  it ! '  she  said  passionately.  '  I  cannot 
believe  it ! ' 

'It  was  amply  proved  at  the  time,'  said  Langham  drily, 
'  though  of  course  Madame  Desforets  tried  to  put  her  own  colour 
on  it.  But  I  told  you  I  had  private  information.  On  one  of  the 
floors  of  the  house  where  Elise  Romey  was  picked  up,  lived  a 
young  university  professor.  He  is  editing  an  important  Greek 
text,  and  has  lately  had  business  at  the  Museum.  I  made 
friends  with  him  there.  He  walked  home  with  me  this  after- 
noon, saw  the  announcement  of  Madame  Desfordts's  coming,  and 
poured  out  the  story.  He  and  his  wife  nursed  the  unfortunate 
girl  with  devotion.  She  lived  just  a  week,  and  died  of  inflamma- 
tion of  the  lungs.  I  never  in  my  life  heard  anything  so  pitiful 
as  his  description  of  her  delirium,  her  terror,  her  appeals,  her 
shivering  misery  of  cold.' 

There  was  a  pause. 

'  She  is  not  a  woman,'  he  said  presently,  between  his  teeth. 
'  She  is  a  wild  beast.' 

Still  there  was  silence,  and  still  he  held  out  his  hand  to  the 
flame  which  Rose  too  was  staring  at.  At  last  he  turned  round. 

'  I  have  told  you  a  shocking  story,'  he  said  hurriedly.  '  Per- 
haps I  ought  not  to  have  done  it.  But,  as  you  sat  there  talking 
so  lightly,  so  gaily,  it  suddenly  became  to  me  utterly  intolerable 
that  that  woman  should  ever  sit  here  in  this  room — talk  to  you 
— call  you  by  your  name — laugh  with  you — touch  your  hand  ! 
Not  even  your  wilfulness  shall  carry  you  so  far — you  shall  not 
do  it ! ' 


CHAP,  xxxv  ROSE  437 

He  hardly  knew  what  he  said.  He  was  driven  on  by  a  pas- 
sionate sense  of  physical  repulsion  to  the  notion  of  any  contact 
between  her  pure  fair  youth  and  something  malodorous  and 
corrupt.  And  there  was  besides  a  wild  unique  excitement  in 
claiming  for  once  to  stay — to  control  her. 

Rose  lifted  her  head  slowly.  The  fire  was  bright.  He  saw 
the  tears  in  her  eyes,  tears  of  intolerable  pity  for  another  girl's 
awful  story.  But  through  the  tears  something  gleamed — a  Kind 
of  exultation — the  exultation  which  the  magician  feels  when  he 
has  called  spirits  from  the  vasty  deep,  and  after  long  doubt  and 
difficult  invocation  they  rise  at  last  before  his  eyes. 

'I  will  never  see  her  again,'  she  said  in  a  low  wavering 
voice,  but  t  she  too  was  hardly  conscious  of  her  own  words. 
Their  looks  were  on  each  other ;  the  ruddy  capricious  light 
touched  her  glowing  cheeks,  her  straight-lined  grace,  her  white 
hand.  Suddenly  from  the  gulf  of  another's  misery  into  which 
they  had  both  been  looking  there  had  sprung  up,  by  the  strange 
contrariety  of  human  things,  a  heat  and  intoxication  of  feeling, 
wrapping  them  round,  blotting  out  the  rest  of  the  world  from 
them  like  a  golden  mist.  '  Be  always  thus  ! '  her  parted  lips,  her 
liquid  eyes  were  saying  to  him.  His  breath  seemed  to  fail  him ; 
he  was  lost  in  bewilderment. 

There  were  sounds  outside — Catherine's  voice.  He  roused 
himself  with  a  supreme  effort. 

'  To-night— at  Lady  Charlotte's  ? ' 

'  To-night,'  she  said,  and  held  out  her  hand. 

A  sudden  madness  seized  him — he  stooped — his  lips  touched 
it — it  was  hastily  drawn  away,  and  the  door  opened. 


CHAPTER  XXXV 

'  IN  the  first  place,  my  dear  aunt,'  said  Mr.  Flaxman,  throwing 
himself  back  in  his  chair  in  front  of  Lady  Charlotte's  drawing- 
room  fire,  'you  may  spare  your  admonitions,  because  it  is 
becoming  more  and  more  clear  to  me  that,  whatever  my  senti- 
ments may  be,  Miss  Leyburn  never  gives  a  serious  thought  to  me.' 

He  turned  to  look  at  his  companion  over  his  shoulder.  His 
tone  and  manner  were  perfectly  gay,  and  Lady  Charlotte  was 
puzzled  by  him. 

'  Stuff  and  nonsense ! '  replied  the  lady  with  her  usual 
emphasis ;  '  I  never  flatter  you,  Hugh,  and  I  don't  mean  to 
begin  now,  but  it  would  be  mere  folly  not  to  recognise  that  you 
have  advantages  which  must  tell  on  the  mind  of  any  girl  in 
Miss  Leyburn's  position.' 

Hugh  Flaxman  rose,  and,  standing  before  the  fire  with  his 
hands  in  his  pockets,  made  what  seemed  to  be  a  close  inspection 
of  his  irreproachable  trouser-knees. 

'  I  am  sorry  for  your  theory,  Aunt  Charlotte,'  he  said,  still 


438  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

stooping,  '  but  Miss  Leyburn  doesn't  care  twopence  about  my 
advantages.' 

'  Very  proper  of  you  to  say  so,'  returned  Lady  Charlotte 
sharply ;  '  the  remark,  however,  my  good  sir,  does  more  credit 
to  your  heart  than  your  head.' 

'  In  the  next  place,'  he  went  on  undisturbed,  '  why  you  should 
have  done  your  best  this  whole  winter  to  throw  Miss  Leyburn 
and  me  together,  if  you  meant  in  the  end  to  oppose  my  marrying 
her,  I  don't  quite  see.' 

He  looked  up  smiling.  Lady  Charlotte  reddened  ever  so 
slightly. 

'You  know  my  weaknesses,'  she  said  presently,  with  an 
effrontery  which  delighted  her  nephew.  '  She  is  my  latest 
novelty,  she  excites  me,  I  can't  do  without  her.  As  to  you,  I 
can't  remember  that  you  wanted  much  encouragement,  but,  I 
acknowledge,  after  all  these  years  of  resistance — resistance  to 
my  most  legitimate  efforts  to  dispose  of  you — there  was  a  certain 
piquancy  in  seeing  you  caught  at  last ! 

'  Upon  my  word ! '  he  said,  throwing  back  his  head  with  a 
not  very  cordial  laugh,  in  which,  however,  his  aunt  joined.  She 
was  sitting  opposite  to  him,  her  powerful  loosely-gloved  hands 
crossed  over  the  rich  velvet  of  her  dress,  her  fair  large  face  and 
grayish  hair  surmounted  by  a  mighty  cap,  as  vigorous,  shrewd, 
and  individual  a  type  of  English  middle  age  as  could  be  found. 
The  room  behind  her  and  the  second  and  third  drawing-rooms 
were  brilliantly  lighted.  Mr.  Wynnstay  was  enjoying  a  cigar 
in  peace  in  the  smoking-room,  while  his  wife  and  nephew  were 
awaiting  the  arrival  of  the  evening's  guests  upstairs. 

Lady  Charlotte's  mind  had  been  evidently  much  perturbed 
by  the  conversation  with  her  nephew  of  which  we  are  merely 
describing  the  latter  half.  She  was  labouring  under  an  uncom- 
fortable sense  of  being  hoist  with  her  own  petard — an  uncom- 
fortable memory  of  a  certain  warning  of  her  husband's,  delivered 
at  Murewell. 

'  And  now,'  said  Mr.  Flaxman,  '  having  confessed  in  so  many 
words  that  you  have  done  your  best  to  bring  me  up  to  the  fence, 
will  you  kindly  recapitulate  the  arguments  why  in  your  opinion 
I  should  not  jump  it  1 ' 

'Society,  amusement,  flirtation,  are  one  thing,'  she  replied 
with  judicial  imperativeness,  'marriage  is  another.  In  these 
democratic  days  we  must  know  everybody ;  we  should  only 
marry  our  equals.' 

The  instant,  however,  the  words  were  out  of  her  mouth,  she 
regretted  them.  Mr.  Flaxman's  expression  changed. 

'  I  do  not  agree  with  you,'  he  said  calmly,  '  and  you  know  I 
do  not.  You  could  not,  I  imagine,  have  relied  much  upon  that 
argument.' 

'  Good  gracious,  Hugh  ! '  cried  Lady  Charlotte  crossly ;  '  you 
talk  as  if  I  were  really  the  old  campaigner  some  people  suppose 
me  to  be.  I  have  been  amusing  myself — I  have  liked  to  see 


CHAP,  xxxv  ROSE  439 

you  amused.  And  it  is  only  the  last  few  weeks  since  you  have 
begun  to  devote  yourself  so  tremendously,  that  I  have  come  to 
take  the  thing  seriously  at  all.  I  confess,  if  you  like,  that  I 
have  got  you  into  the  scrape — now  I  want  to  get  you  out  of  it ! 
I  am  not  thin-skinned,  but  I  hate  family  unpleasantnesses — and 
you  know  what  the  duke  will  say.' 

'  The  duke  be — translated  ! '  said  Flaxman  coolly.  '  Nothing 
of  what  you  have  said  or  could  say  on  this  point,  my  dear  aunt, 
has  the  smallest  weight  with  me.  But  Providence  has  been 
kinder  to  you  and  the  duke  than  you  deserve.  Miss  Leyburn 
does  not  care  for  me,  and  she  does  care — or  I  am  very  much 
mistaken — for  somebody  else.' 

He  pronounced  the  words  deliberately,  watching  their  effect 
upon  her. 

'What,  that  Oxford  nonentity,  Mr.  Langham,  the  Elsmeres' 
friend '(  Ridiculous !  What  attraction  could  a  man  of  that 
type  have  for  a  girl  of  hers  ? ' 

'I  am  not  bound  to  supply  an  answer  to  that  question,' 
replied  her  nephew.  'However,  he  is  not  a  nonentity.  Far 
from  it !  Ten  years  ago,  when  I  was  leaving  Cambridge,  he 
was  certainly  one  of  the  most  distinguished  of  the  young  Oxford 
tutors.' 

'  Another  instance  of  what  university  reputation  is  worth  ! ' 
said  Lady  Charlotte  scornfully.  It  was  clear  that  even  in  the 
case  of  a  beauty  whom  she  thought  it  beneath  him  to  marry, 
she  was  not  pleased  to  see  her  nephew  ousted  by  the  force 
majeure  of  a  rival — and  that  a  rival  whom  she  regarded  as  an 
utter  nobody,  having  neither  marketable  eccentricity,  nor 
family,  nor  social  brilliance  to  recommend  him. 

Flaxman  understood  her  perplexity  and  watched  her  with 
critical  amused  eyes. 

'I  should  like  to  know,'  he  said  presently,  with  a  curious 
slowness  and  suavity,  '  I  should  greatly  like  to  know  why  you 
asked  him  here  to-night  ? ' 

'  You  know  perfectly  well  that  I  should  ask  anybody — a  con- 
vict, a  crossing-sweeper — if  I  happened  to  be  half  an  hour  in 
the  same  room  with  him  ! ' 

Flaxman  laughed. 

'Well,  it  may  be  convenient  to-night,'  he  said  reflectively. 
'  What  are  we  to  do — some  thought-reading  ? ' 

'  Yes.  It  isn't  a  crush.  I  have  only  asked  about  thirty  or 
forty  people.  Mr.  Denman  is  to  manage  it.' 

She  mentioned  an  amateur  thought-reader  greatly  in  request 
at  the  moment. 

Flaxman  cogitated  for  a  while  and  then  propounded  a  little 
plan  to  his  aunt,  to  which  she,  after  some  demur,  agreed. 

'  I  want  to  make  a  few  notes,'  he  said  drily,  when  it  was 
arranged  ;  '  I  should  be  glad  to  satisfy  myself.' 

When  the  Misses  Leyburn  were  announced,  Rose,  though  the 
younger,  came  in  first.  She  always  took  the  lead  by  a  sort  of 


440  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

natural  right,  and  Agnes  never  dreamt  of  protesting.  To-night 
the  sisters  were  in  white.  Some  soft  creamy  stuft'  was  folded 
and  draped  about  Rose's  slim  shapely  figure  in  such  a  way  as  to 
bring  out  all  its  charming  roundness  and  grace.  Her  neck  and 
arms  bore  the  challenge  of  the  dress  victoriously.  Her  red-gold 
hair  gleamed  in  the  light  of  Lady  Charlotte's  innumerable 
candles.  A  knot  of  dusky  blue  feathers  on  her  shoulder,  and  a 
Japanese  fan  of  the  same  colour,  gave  just  that  touch  of  pur- 
pose and  art  which  the  spectator  seems  to  claim  as  the  tribute 
answering  to  his  praise  in  the  dress  of  a  young  girl.  She  moved 
with  perfect  self-possession,  distributing  a  few  smiling  looks  to 
the  people  she  knew  as  she  advanced  towards  Lady  Charlotte. 
Any  one  with  a  discerning  eye  could  have  seen  that  she  was  in 
that  stage  of  youth  when  a  beautiful  woman  is  like  a  statue  to 
which  the  master  is  giving  the  finishing  touches.  Life,  the 
sculptor,  had  been  at  work  upon  her,  refining  here,  softening 
there,  planing  away  awkwardness,  emphasising  grace,  disengag- 
ing as  it  were,  week  by  week,  and  month  by  month,  all  the 
beauty  of  which  the  original  conception  was  capable.  And  the 
process  is  one  attended  always  by  a  glow  and  sparkle,  a  kind  of 
effluence  of  youth  and  pleasure,  which  makes  beauty  more 
beautiful  and  grace  more  graceful. 

The  little  murmur  and  rustle  of  persons  turning  to  look, 
which  had  already  begun  to  mark  her  entrance  into  a  room, 
surrounded  Rose  as  she  walked  up  to  Lady  Charlotte.  Mr. 
Flaxman,  who  had  been  standing  absently  silent,  woke  up 
directly  she  appeared,  and  went  to  greet  her  before  his  aunt. 

'  You  failed  us  at  rehearsal,'  he  said  with  smiling  reproach  ; 
'  we  were  all  at  sixes  and  sevens.' 

'  I  had  a  sick  mother,  unfortunately,  who  kept  me  at  home. 
Lady  Charlotte,  Catherine  couldn't  come.  Agnes  and  I  are 
alone  in  the  world.  Will  you  chaperon  us  ? ' 

'I  don't  know  whether  I  will  accept  the  responsibility  to- 
night— in  that  new  gown,'  replied  Lady  Charlotte  grimly,  putting 
up  her  eyeglass  to  look  at  it  and  the  wearer.  Rose  bore  the 
scrutiny  with  a  light  smiling  silence,  even  though  she  knew 
Mr.  Flaxman  was  looking  top. 

'  On  the  contrary,'  she  said,  '  one  always  feels  so  particularly 
good  and  prim  in  a  new  frock.' 

'  Really  ?  I  should  have  thought  it  one  of  Satan's  likeliest 
moments,'  said  Flaxman,  laughing — his  eyes,  however,  the  while 
saying  quite  other  things  to  her,  as  they  finished  their  inspection 
of  her  dress. 

Lady  Charlotte  threw  a  sharp  glance  first  at  him  and  then  at 
Rose's  smiling  ease,  before  she  hurried  off  to  other  guests. 

'  I  have  made  a  muddle  as  usual,'  she  said  to  herself  in  dis- 
gust, '  perhaps  even  a  worse  one  than  I  thought ! ' 

Whatever  might  be  Hugh  Flaxman's  state  of  mind,  however, 
he  never  showed  greater  self-possession  than  on  this  particular 
evening. 


OHA.P.  xxxv  ROSE  441 

A  few  minutes  after  Rose's  entry  he  introduced  her  for  the 
first  time  to  his  sister  Lady  Helen.  The  Varleys  had  only  just 
come  up  to  town  for  the  opening  of  Parliament,  and  Lady  Helen 
had  come  to-night  to  Martin  Street,  all  ardour  to  see  Hugh's 
new  adoration,  and  the  girl  whom  all  the  world  was  beginning 
to  talk  about — both  as  a  beauty  and  as  an  artist.  She  rushed 
at  Rose,  if  any  word  so  violent  can  be  applied  to  anything  so 
light  and  airy  as  Lady  Helen's  movements,  caught  the  girl's 
hands  in  both  hers,  and,  gazing  up  at  her  with  undisguised 
admiration,  said  to  her  the  prettiest,  daintiest,  most  effusive 
things  possible.  Rose — who  with  all  her  lithe  shapeliness, 
looked  over-tall  and  even  a  trifle  stiff  beside  the  tiny  bird-like 
Lady  Helen — took  the  advances  of  Hugh  Flaxman's  sister  with 
a  pretty  flush  of  flattered  pride.  She  looked  down  at  the  small 
radiant  creature  with  soft  and  friendly  eyes,  and  Hugh  Flax- 
man  stood  by,  so  far  well  pleased. 

Then  he  went  off  to  fetch  Mr.  Denman,  the  hero  of  the  even- 
ing, to  be  introduced  to  her.  While  he  was  away,  Agnes,  who 
was  behind  her  sister,  saw  Rose's  eyes  wandering  from  Lady 
Helen  to  the  door,  restlessly  searching  and  then  returning. 

Presently  through  the  growing  crowd  round  the  entrance 
Agnes  spied  a  well-known  form  emerging. 

'  Mr.  Langham  !  But  Rose  never  told  me  he  was  to  be  here 
to-night,  and  how  dreadful  he  looks  ! ' 

Agnes  was  so  startled  that  her  eyes  followed  Langham  closely 
across  the  room.  Rose  had  seen  him  at  once ;  and  they  had 
greeted  each  other  across  the  crowd.  Agnes  was  absorbed, 
trying  to  analyse  what  had  struck  her  so.  The  face  was  always 
melancholy,  always  pale,  but  to-night  it  was  ghastly,  and  from 
the  whiteness  of  cheek  and  brow,  the  eyes,  the  jet-black  hair 
stood  out  in  intense  and  disagreeable  relief.  She  would  have 
remarked  on  it  to  Rose,  but  that  Rose's  attention  was  claimed 
by  the  young  thought-reader,  Mr.  Denman,  whom  Mr.  Flaxman 
had  brought  up.  Mr.  Denman  was  a  fair -haired  young  Her- 
cules, whose  tremulous  agitated  manner  contrasted  oddly  with 
his  athlete's  looks.  Among  other  magnetisms  he  was  clearly 
open  to  the  magnetism  of  women,  and  he  stayed  talking  to 
Rose,  staring  furtively  at  her  the  while  from  under  his  heavy 
lids, — much  longer  than  the  girl  thought  fair. 

'  Have  you  seen  any  experiments  in  the  working  of  this  new 
force  before  ? '  he  asked  her,  with  a  solemnity  which  sat  oddly 
on  his  commonplace  bearded  face. 

'  Oh  yes  ! '  she  said  flippantly.  '  We  have  tried  it  sometimes. 
It  is  very  good  fun.' 

He  drew  himself  up.  '  Not  fun,'  he  said  impressively,  '  not 
fun.  Thought-reading  wants  seriousness ;  the  most  tremendous 
things  depend  upon  it.  If  established  it  will  revolutionise  our 
whole  views  of  life.  Even  a  Huxley  could  not  deny  that ! ' 

She  studied  him  with  mocking  eyes.  '  Do  you  imagine  this 
party  to-night  looks  very  serious  ? ' 


442  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  V 

His  face  fell. 

'  One  can  seldom  get  people  to  take  it  scientifically,'  he  ad- 
mitted, sighing.  Rose,  impatiently,  thought  him  a  most  pre- 
posterous young  man.  Why  was  he  not  cricketing  or  shooting 
or  exploring,  or  using  the  muscles  Nature  had  given  him  so 
amply,  to  some  decent  practical  purpose,  instead  of  making  a 
business  out  of  ruining  his  own  nerves  and  other  people's  night 
after  night  in  hot  drawing-rooms  ?  And  when  would  he  go  away  ? 

'  Come,  Mr.  Denman,'  said  Flaxman,  laying  hands  upon  him  ; 
'  the  audience  is  about  collected,  I  think.  Ah,  there  you  are  ! ' 
and  he  gave  Langham  a  cool  greeting.  'Have  you  seen  any- 
thing yet  of  these  fashionable  dealings  with  the  devil  ? ' 

'  Nothing.     Are  you  a  believer  ? ' 

Flaxman  shrugged  his  shoulders.  '  I  never  refuse  an  experi- 
ment of  any  kind,'  he  added  with  an  odd  change  of  voice. 
'Come,  Denman.' 

And  the  two  went  off.  Langham  came  to  a  stand  beside 
Rose,  while  old  Lord  Rupert,  as  jovial  as  ever,  and  bubbling 
over  with  gossip  about  the  Queen's  Speech,  appropriated  Lady 
Helen,  who  was  the  darling  of  all  elderly  men. 

They  did  not  speak.  Rose  sent  him  a  ray  from  eyes  full  of  a 
new  divine  shyness.  He  smiled  gently  in  answer  to  it,  and  full 
of  her  own  young  emotion,  and  of  the  effort  to  conceal  it  from 
all  the  world,  she  noticed  none  of  that  change  which  had  struck 
Agnes. 

And  all  the  while,  if  she  could  have  penetrated  the  man's 
silence  !  An  hour  before  this  moment  Langham  had  vowed 
that  nothing  should  take  him  to  Lady  Charlotte's  that  night. 
And  yet  here  he  was,  riveted  to  her  side,  alive  like  any  normal 
human  being  to  every  detail  of  her  loveliness,  shaken  to  his 
inmost  being  by  the  intoxicating  message  of  her  look,  of  the 
transformation  which  had  passed  in  an  instant  over  the  teasing 
difficult  creature  of  the  last  few  months. 

At  Murewell  his  chagrin  had  been  not  to  feel,  not  to  struggle, 
to  have  been  cheated  out  of  experience.  Well,  here  is  the  ex- 
perience in  good  earnest !  And  Langham  is  wrestling  with  it 
for  dear  life.  And  how  little  the  exquisite  child  beside  him 
knows  of  it,  or  of  the  man  on  whom  she  is  spending  her  first 
wilful  passion  !  She  stands  strangely  exulting  in  her  own 
strange  victory  over  a  life,  a  heart,  which  had  defied  and  eluded 
her.  The  world  throbs  and  thrills  about  her,  the  crowd  beside 
her  is  all  unreal,  the  air  is  full  of  whisper,  of  romance. 

The  thought-reading  followed  its  usual  course.  A  murder 
and  its  detection  were  given  in  dumb  show.  Then  it  was  the 
turn  of  card-guessing,  bank-note-finding,  and  the  various  other 
forms  of  telepathic  hide  and  seek.  Mr.  Flaxman  superintended 
them  all,  his  restless  eye  wandering  every  other  minute  to  the 
farther  drawing-room  in  which  the  lights  had  been  lowered, 
catching  there  always  the  same  patch  of  black  and  white, — 
Rose's  dress  and  the  dark  form  beside  her. 


CHAP,  xxxv  ROSE  443 

'  Are  you  convinced  ?  Do  you  believe  ? '  said  Rose,  merrily 
looking  up  at  her  companion. 

'In  telepathy?  Well — so  far — I  have  not  got  beyond  the 
delicacy  and  perfection  of  Mr.  Denman's — muscular  sensation. 
So  much  I  am  sure  of  ! ' 

'  Oh,  but  your  scepticism  is  ridiculous  ! '  she  said  gaily.  '  We 
know  that  some  people  have  an  extraordinary  power  over 
others.' 

'  Yes,  that  certainly  we  know  ! '  he  answered,  his  voice  drop- 
ping, an  odd  strained  note  in  it.  'I  grant  you  that.' 

She  trembled  deliciously.  Her  eyelids  fell.  They  stood  to- 
gether, conscious  only  of  each  other. 

'  Now,'  said  Mr.  Denman,  advancing  to  the  doorway  between 
the  two  drawing-rooms, '  I  have  done  all  I  can — I  am  exhausted. 
But  let  me  beg  of  you  all  to  go  on  with  some  experiments 
amongst  yourselves.  Every  fresh  discovery  of  this  power 
in  a  new  individual  is  a  gain  to  science.  I  believe  about  one  in 
ten  has  some  share  of  it.  Mr.  Flaxman  and  I  will  arrange  every- 
thing, if  any  one  will  volunteer  1 ' 

The  audience  broke  up  into  groups,  laughing,  chatting,  sug- 
gesting this  and  that.  Presently  Lady  Charlotte's  loud  dicta- 
torial voice  made  itself  heard,  as  she  stood  eyeglass  in  hand 
looking  round  the  circle  of  her  guests. 

'  Somebody  must  venture — we  are  losing  time.' 

Then  the  eyeglass  stopped  at  Rose,  who  was  now  sitting  tall 
and  radiant  on  the  sofa,  her  blue  fan^  across  her  white  knees. 
'Miss  Ley  burn — you  are  always  public -spirited — will  you  be 
victimised  for  the  good  of  science  ? ' 

The  girl  got  up  with  a  smile. 

'  And  Mr.  Langham — will  you  see  what  you  can  do  with  Miss 
Leyburn  ?  Hugh — we  all  choose  her  task,  don't  we — then  Mr. 
Langham  wills  r 

Flaxman  came  up  to  explain.  Langham  had  turned  to  Rose 
— a  wild  fury  with  Lady  Charlotte  and  the  whole  affair  sweep- 
ing through  him.  But  there  was  no  time  to  demur  ;  that  judicial 
eye  was  on  them  ;  the  large  figure  and  towering  cap  bent  to- 
wards him.  Refusal  was  impossible. 

'  Command  me  ! '  he  said  with  a  sudden  straightening  of  the 
form  and  a  flush  on  the  pale  cheek.  '  I  am  afraid  Miss  Leyburn 
will  find  me  a  very  bad  partner.' 

'  Well,  now  then  ! '  said  Flaxman ;  '  Miss  Leyburn,  will  you 
please  go  down  into  the  library  while  we  settle  what  you  are  to 

She  went,  and  he  held  the  door  open  for  her.  But  she  passed 
out  unconscious  of  him — rosy,  confused,  her  eyes  bent  on  the 
ground. 

'  Now,  then,  what  shall  Miss  Leyburn  do  ? '  asked  Lady  Char- 
lotte in  the  same  loud  emphatic  tone. 

'  If  I  might  suggest  something  quite  different  from  anything 
that  has  been  yet  tried,'  said  Mr.  Flaxman,  'suppose  we  re- 


444  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

quire  Miss  Leyburn  to  kiss  the  hand  of  the  little  marble 
statue  of  Hope  in  the  far  drawing-room.  What  do  you  say, 
Langham  ? ' 

'  What  you  please ! '  said  Langham,  moving  up  to  him.  A 
glance  passed  between  the  two  men.  In  Langham's  there  was 
a  hardly  sane  antagonism  and  resentment,  in  Flaxman's  an 
excited  intelligence. 

'  Now  then,  said  Flaxman  coolly,  '  fix  your  mind  steadily  on 
what  Miss  Leyburn  is  to  do — you  must  take  her  hand — but 
except  in  thought,  you  must  carefully  follow  and  not  lead  her. 
Shall  I  call  her  ?' 

Langham  abruptly  assented.  He  had  a  passionate  sense  of 
being  watched — tricked.  Why  were  he  and  she  to  be  made  a 
spectacle  for  this  man  and  his  friends  !  A  mad  irrational  indig- 
nation surged  through  him. 

Then  she  was  led  in  blindfolded,  one  hand  stretched  out  feel- 
ing the  air  in  front  of  her.  The  circle  of  people  drew  back.  Mr. 
Flaxman  and  Mr.  Denman  prepared,  note-book  in  hand,  to  watch 
the  experiment.  Langham  moved  desperately  forward. 

But  the  instant  her  soft  trembling  hand  touched  his,  as  though 
by  enchantment,  the  surrounding  scene,  the  faces,  the  lights, 
were  blotted  out  from  him.  He  forgot  his  anger,  he  forgot 
everything  but  her  and  this  thing  she  was  to  do.  He  had  her 
in  his  grasp — he  was  the  man,  the  master — and  what  enchanting 
readiness  to  yield  in  the  swaying  pliant  form  !  In  the  distance 
far  away  gleamed  the  statue  of  Hope,  a  child  on  tiptoe,  one  out- 
stretched arm  just  visible  from  where  he  stood. 

There  was  a  moment's  silent  expectation.  Every  eye  was 
riveted  on  the  two  figures — on  the  dark  handsome  man — on  the 
blindfolded  girl. 

At  last  Rose  began  to  move  gently  forward.  It  was  a  strange 
wavering  motion.  The  breath  came  quickly  through  her  slightly 
parted  lips  :  her  bright  colour  was  ebbing.  She  was  conscious 
of  nothing  but  the  grasp  in  which  her  hand  was  held — otherwise 
her  mind  seemed  a  blank.  Her  state  during  the  next  few  seconds 
was  not  unlike  the  state  of  some  one  under  the  partial  influence 
of  an  anaesthetic ;  a  benumbing  grip  was  laid  on  all  her  facul- 
ties ;  and  she  knew  nothing  of  how  she  moved  or  where  she 
was  going. 

Suddenly  the  trance  cleared  away.  It  might  have  lasted  half 
an  hour  or  five  seconds,  for  all  she  knew.  But  she  was  standing 
beside  a  small  marble  statue  in  the  farthest  drawing-room,  and 
her  lips  had  on  them  a  slight  sense  of  chill,  as  though  they  had 
just  been  laid  to  something  cold. 

She  pulled  off  the  handkerchief  from  her  eyes.  Above  her 
was  Langham's  face,  a  marvellous  glow  and  animation  in  every 
line  of  it. 

'  Have  I  done  it  ? '  she  asked  in  a  tremulous  whisper. 

For  the  moment  her  self-control  was  gone.  She  was  still 
bewildered. 


CHAP,  xxxv  ROSE  445 

He  nodded,  smiling. 

'  I  am  so  glad,'  she  said,  still  in  the  same  quick  whisper,  gazing 
at  him.  There  was  the  most  adorable  abandon  in  her  whole  look 
and  attitude.  He  could  but  just  restrain  himself  from  taking 
her  in  his  arms,  and  for  one  bright  flashing  instant  each  saw 
nothing  but  the  other. 

The  heavy  curtain  which  had  partially  hidden  the  door  of  the 
little  old-fashioned  powder-closet  as  they  approached  it,  and 
through  which  they  had  swept  without  heeding,  was  drawn  back 
with  a  rattle. 

'  She  has  done  it !  Hurrah  ! '  cried  Mr.  Flaxman.  '  What  a 
rush  that  last  was,  Miss  Leyburn  !  You  left  us  all  behind.' 

Rose  turned  to  him,  still  dazed,  drawing  her  hand  across  her 
eyes.  A  rush  ?  She  had  known  nothing  about  it ! 

Mr.  Flaxman  turned  and  walked  back,  apparently  to  report 
to  his  aunt,  who,  with  Lady  Helen,  had  been  watching  the  ex- 
periment from  the  main  drawing-room.  His  face  was  a  curious 
mixture  of  gravity  and  the  keenest  excitement.  The  gravity 
was  mostly  sharp  compunction.  He  had  satisfied  a  passionate 
curiosity,  but  in  the  doing  of  it  he  had  outraged  certain  instincts 
of  breeding  and  refinement  which  were  now  revenging  them- 
selves. 

'  Did  she  do  it  exactly  ? '  said  Lady  Helen  eagerly. 

'  Exactly,'  he  said,  standing  still 

Lady  Charlotte  looked  at  him  significantly.  But  he  would 
not  see  her  look. 

'  Lady  Charlotte,  where  is  my  sister  ? '  said  Rose,  coming  up 
from  the  back  room,  looking  now  nearly  as  white  as  her  dress. 

It  appeared  that  Agnes  had  just  been  carried  off  by  a  lady 
who  lived  on  Campden  Hill  close  to  the  Leyburns,  and  who  had 
been  obliged  to  go  at  the  beginning  of  the  last  experiment. 
Agnes,  torn  between  her  interest  in  what  was  going  on  and  her 
desire  to  get  back  to  her  mother,  had  at  last  hurriedly  accepted 
this  Mrs.  iSherwood's  offer  of  a  seat  in  her  carriage,  imagining 
that  her  sister  would  want  to  stay  a  good  deal  later,  and  relying 
on  Lady  Charlotte's  promise  that  she  should  be  safely  put  into  a 
hansom. 

'  I  must  go,'  said  Rose,  putting  her  hand  to  her  head.  '  How 
tiring  this  is  !  How  long  did  it  take,  Mr.  Flaxman  ? ' 

'  Exactly  three  minutes,'  he  said,  his  gaze  fixed  upon  her  with 
an  expression  that  only  Lady  Helen  noticed. 

'  So  little  !  Good-night,  Lady  Charlotte  ! '  and  giving  her 
hand  first  to  her  hostess  then  to  Mr.  Flaxman's  bewildered 
sister,  she  moved  away  into  the  crowd. 

'Hugh,  of  course  you  are  going  down  with  her1?'  exclaimed 
Lady  Charlotte  under  her  breath.  '  You  must.  I  promised  to 
see  her  safely  off  the  premises.' 

He  stood  immovable.  Lady  Helen  with  a  reproachful  look 
made  a  step  forward,  but  he  caught  her  arm. 

'  Don't  spoil  sport,'  he  said,  in  a  tone  which,  amid  the  hum  of 


446  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

discussion  caused  by  the  experiment,  was  heard  only  by  his  aunt 
and  sister. 

They  looked  at  him — the  one  amazed,  the  other  grimly  ob- 
servant—  and  caught  a  slight  significant  motion  of  the  head 
towards  Langham's  distant  figure. 

^  Langham  came  up  and  made  his  farewells.  As  he  turned 
his  back,  Lady  Helen's  large  astonished  eyes  followed  him  to  the 
door. 

'  Oh,  Hugh  ! '  was  all  she  could  say  as  they  came  back  to  her 
brother. 

'Never  mind,  Nellie,'  he  whispered,  touched  by  the  bewil- 
dered sympathy  of  her  look ;  '  I  will  tell  you  all  about  it  to- 
morrow. I  have  not  been  behaving  well,  and  am  not  particularly 
pleased  with  myself.  But  for  her  it  is  all  right.  Poor,  pretty 
little  thing!' 

And  he  walked  away  into  the  thick  of  the  conversation. 

Downstairs  the  hall  was  already  full  of  people  waiting  for 
their  carriages.  Langham,  hurrying  down,  saw  Rose  coming 
out  of  the  cloak-room,  muffled  up  in  brown  furs,  a  pale  child-like 
fatigue  in  her  looks  which  set  his  heart  beating  faster  than  ever. 

'Miss  Ley  burn,  how  are  you  going  home?' 

'  Will  you  ask  for  a  hansom,  please  ? ' 

'  Take  my  arm,'  he  said,  and  she  clung  ^to  him  through  the 
crush  till  they  reached  the  door. 

Nothing  but  private  carriages  were  in  sight.  The  street 
seemed  blocked,  a  noisy  tumult  of  horses  and  footmen  and 
shouting  men  with  lanterns.  Which  of  them  suggested,  '  Shall 
we  walk  a  few  steps  ? '  At  any  rate,  here  they  were,  out  in  the 
wind  and  the  darkness,  every  step  carrying  them  farther  away 
from  that  moving  patch  of  noise  and  light  behind. 

'  We  shall  find  a  cab  at  once  in  Park  Lane,'  he  said.  '  Are  you 
warm  ? ' 

'Perfectly.' 

A  fur  hood  fitted  round  her  face,  to  which  the  colour  was 
coming  back.  She  held  her  cloak  tightly  round  her,  and  her 
little  feet,  fairly  well  shod,  slipped  in  and  out  on  the  dry  frosty 
pavement. 

Suddenly  they  passed  a  huge  unfinished  house,  the  building 
of  which  was  being  pushed  on  by  electric  light.  The  great 
walls,  ivory  white  in  the  glare,  rose  into  the  purply-blue  of  the 
starry  February  sky,  and  as  they  passed  within  the  power  of 
the  lamps,  each  saw  with  noonday  distinctness  every  line  and 
feature  in  the  other's  face.  They  swept  on — the  night,  with  its 
alternations  of  flame  and  shadow,  an  unreal  and  enchanted 
world  about  them.  A  space  of  darkness  succeeded  the  space  of 
daylight.  Behind  them  in  the  distance  was  the  sound  of 
hammers  and  workmen's  voices ;  before  them  the  dim  trees  of 
the  park.  Not  a  human  being  was  in  sight.  London  seemed 
to  exist  to  be  the  mere  dark  friendly  shelter  of  this  wandering 
of  theirs. 


CHAP,  xxxv  ROSE  447 

A  blast  of  wind  blew  her  cloak  out  of  her  grasp.  But  before 
she  could  close  it  again,  an  arm  was  flung  around  her.  She 
could  not  speak  or  move,  she  stood  passive,  conscious  only  of 
the  strangeness  of  the  wintry  wind,  and  of  this  warm  breast 
against  which  her  cheek  was  laid. 

'  Oh,  stay  there  ! '  a  voice  said  close  to  her  ear.  '  Rest  there 
— pale  tired  child — pale  tired  little  child  ! ' 

That  moment  seemed  to  last  an  eternity.  He  held  her  close, 
cherishing  and  protecting  her  from  the  cold — not  kissing  her — 
till  at  length  she  looked  up  with  bright  eyes,  shining  through 
happy  tears. 

'  Are  you  sure  at  last  ? '  she  said,  strangely  enough,  speaking 
out  of  the  far  depths  of  her  own  thought  to  his. 

'  Sure  ! '  he  said,  his  expression  changing.  '  What  can  I  be 
sure  of  1  I  am  sure  that  I  am  not  worth  your  loving,  sure  that 
I  am  poor,  insignificant,  obscure,  that  if  you  give  yourself  to  me 
you  will  be  miserably  throwing  yourself  away  ! ' 

She  looked  at  him,  still  smiling,  a  white  sorceress  weaving 
spells  about  him  in  the  darkness.  He  drew  her  lightly  gloved 
hand  through  his  arm,  holding  the  fragile  fingers  close  in  his, 
and  they  moved  on. 

'Do  you  know,'  he  repeated — a  tone  of  intense  melancholy 
replacing  the  tone  of  passion, — '  how  little  I  have  to  give  you  ? 

'  I  know,'  she  answered,  her  face  turned  shyly  away  from  him, 
her  words  coming  from  under  the  fur  hoou  which  had  fallen 
forward  a  little.  'I  know  that — that — you  are  not  rich,  that 
you  distrust  yourself,  that ' 

'Oh,  hush,'  he  said,  and  his  voice  was  full  of  pain.  'You 
know  so  little ;  let  me  paint  myself.  I  have  lived  alone,  for 
myself,  in  myself,  till  sometimes  there  seems  to  be  hardly 
anything  left  in  me  to  love  or  be  loved  ;  nothing  but  a  brain,  a 
machine  that  exists  only  for  certain  selfish  ends.  My  habits 
are  the  tyrants  of  years ;  and  at  Murewell,  though  I  loved  you 
there,  they  were  strong  enough  to  carry  me  away  from  you. 
There  is  something  paralysing  in  me,  which  is  always  forbidding 
me  to  feel,  to  will.  Sometimes  I  think  it  is  an  actual  physical 
disability — the  horror  that  is  in  me  of  change,  of  movement,  of 
effort.  Can  you  bear  with  me '(  Can  you  be  poor  ?  Can  you 
live  a  life  of  monotony  ?  Oh,  impossible  ! '  he  broke  out,  almost 
putting  her  hand  away  from  him.  'You,  who  ought  to  be  a 
queen  of  this  world,  for  whom  everything  bright  and  brilliant  is 
waiting  if  you  will  but  stretch  out  your  hand  to  it.  It  is  a 
crime — an  infamy — that  I  should  be  speaking  to  you  like  this  ! ' 

Rose  raised  her  head.  A  passing  light  shone  upon  her.  She 
was  trembling  and  pale  again,  but  her  eyes  were  unchanged. 

'  No,  no,'  she  said  wistfully  ;  '  not  if  you  love  me.' 

He  hung  above  her,  an  agony  of  feeling  in  the  fine  rigid  face, 
of  which  the  beautiful  features  and  surfaces  were  already  worn 
and  blanched  by  the  life  of  thought.  What  possessed  him  was 
not  so  much  distrust  of  circumstance  as  doubt,  hideous  doubt, 


448  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

of  himself,  of  this  very  passion  beating  within  him.  She  saw 
nothing,  meanwhile,  but  the  self-depreciation  which  she  knew 
so  well  in  him,  and  against  which  her  love  in  its  rash  ignorance 
and  generosity  cried  out. 

'  You  will  not  say  you  love  me ! '  she  cried,  with  hurrying 
breath.  '  But  I  know — I  know — you  do.' 

Then  her  courage  sinking,  ashamed,  blushing,  once  more 
turning  away  from  him — 'At  least,  if  you  don't,  I  am  very — 
very — unhappy.' 

The  soft  words  flew  through  his  blood.  For  an  instant  he 
felt  himself  saved,  like  Faust, — saved  by  the  surpassing  moral 
beauty  of  one  moment's  impression.  That  she  should  need  him, 
that  his  life  should  matter  to  hers !  They  were  passing  the 
garden  wall  of  a  great  house.  In  the  deepest  shadow  of  it,  he 
stooped  suddenly  and  kissed  her. 


CHAPTER  XXXVI 

LANGHAM  parted  with  Rose  at  the  corner  of  Martin  Street. 
She  would  not  let  him  take  her  any  farther. 

'  I  will  say  nothing,'  she  whispered  to  him,  as  he  put  her  into 
a  passing  hansom,  wrapping  her  cloak  warmly  round  her,  '  till 
I  see  you  again.  To-morrow  1 ' 

'  To-morrow  morning,'  he  said,  waving  his  hand  to  her,  and 
in  another  instant  he  was  facing  the  north  wind  alone. 

He  walked  on  fast  towards  Beaumont  Street,  but  by  the 
time  he  reached  his  destination  midnight  had  struck.  He  made 
his  way  into  his  room  where  the  fire  was  still  smouldering,  and 
striking  a  light,  sank  into  his  large  reading  chair,  beside  which 
the  volumes  used  in  the  afternoon  lay  littered  on  the  floor. 

He  was  suddenly  penetrated  with  the  cold  of  the  night,  and 
hung  shivering  over  the  few  embers  which  still  glowed.  What 
had  happened  to  him?  In  this  room,  in  this  chair,  the  self- 
forgetting  excitement  of  that  walk,  scarcely  half  an  hour  old, 
seems  to  him  already  long  passed — incredible  almost. 

And  yet  the  brain  was  still  full  of  images,  the  mind  still  full 
of  a  hundred  new  impressions.  That  fair  head  against  his 
breast,  those  soft  confiding  words,  those  yielding  lips.  Ah  !  it 
is  the  poor,  silent,  insignificant  student  that  has  conquered.  It 
is  he,  not  the  successful  man  of  the  world,  that  has  held  that 
young  and  beautiful  girl  in  his  arms,  and  heard  from  her  the 
sweetest  and  humblest  confession  of  love.  Fate  can  have  neither 
wit  nor  conscience  to  have  ordained  it  so  ;  but  fate  has  so 
ordained  it.  Langham  takes  note  of  his  victory,  takes  dismal 
note  also  that  the  satisfaction  of  it  has  already  half  departed. 

So  the  great  moment  has  come  and  gone  !  The  one  supreme 
experience  which  life  and  his  own  will  had  so  far  rigidly  denied 
him,  is  his.  He  has  felt  the  torturing  thrill  of  passion — he  has 


CHAP,  xxxvi  ROSE  449 

evoked  such  an  answer  as  all  men  might  envy  him, — and  fresh 
from  Rose's  kiss,  from  Rose's  beauty,  the  strange  maimed  soul 
falls  to  a  pitiless  analysis  of  his  passion,  her  response !  One 
moment  he  is  at  her  feet  in  a  voiceless  trance  of  gratitude  and 
tenderness  ;  the  next — is  nothing  what  it  promises  to  be  ? — and 
has  the  boon  already,  now  that  he  has  it  in  his  grasp,  lost  some 
of  its  beauty,  just  as  the  sea-shell  drawn  out  of  the  water,  where 
its  lovely  iridescence  tempted  eye  and  hand,  loses  half  its  fairy 
charm  ? 

The  night  wore  on.  Outside  an  occasional  cab  or  cart  would 
rattle  over  the  stones  of  the  street,  an  occasional  voice  or  step 
would  penetrate  the  thin  walls  of  the  house,  bringing  a  shock 
of  sound  into  that  silent  upper  room.  Nothing  caught  Lang- 
ham's  ear.  He  was  absorbed  in  the  dialogue  which  was  to 
decide  his  life. 

Opposite  to  him,  as  it  seemed,  there  sat  a  spectral  reproduc- 
tion of  himself,  his  true  self,  with  whom  he  held  a  long  and 
ghastly  argument. 

'But  I  love  her! — I  love  her!  A  little  courage — a  little 
effort — and  I  too  can  achieve  what  other  men  achieve.  I  have 
gifts,  great  gifts.  Mere  contact  with  her,  the  mere  necessities 
of  the  situation,  will  drive  me  back  to  life,  teach  me  how  to  live 
normally,  like  other  men.  I  have  not  forced  her  love — it  has  been 
a  free  gift.  Who  can  blame  me  if  I  take  it,  if  I  cling  to  it,  as  the 
man  freezing  in  a  crevasse  clutches  the  rope  thrown  to  him  ? ' 

To  which  the  pale  spectre  self  said  scornfully — 

'  Courage  and  effort  may  as  well  be  dropped  out  of  your 
vocabulary.  They  are  words  that  you  have  no  use  for.  Replace 
them  by  two  others — habit  and  character.  Slave  as  you  are  of 
habit,  of  the  character  you  have  woven  for  yourself  out  of  years 
of  deliberate  living — what  wild  unreason  to  imagine  that  love 
can  unmake,  can  recreate !  What  you  are,  you  are  to  all 
eternity.  Bear  your  own  burden,  but  for  God's  sake  beguile  no 
other  human  creature  into  trusting  you  with  theirs  ! ' 

'  But  she  loves  me  !  Impossible  that  I  should  crush  and  tear 
so  kind,  so  warm  a  heart !  Poor  child — poor  child  !  I  have 
played  on  her  pity.  I  have  won  all  she  had  to  give.  And  now 
to  throw  her  girt  back  in  her  face — oh  monstrous — oh  inhuman  ! ' 
and  the  cold  drops  stood  on  his  forehead. 

But  the  other  self  was  inexorable.  '  You  have  acted  as  you 
were  bound  to  act — as  any  man  may  be  expected  to  act  in 
whom  will  and  manhood  and  true  human  kindness  are  dying 
out,  poisoned  by  despair  and  the  tyranny  of  the  critical  habit. 
But  at  least  do  not  add  another  crime  to  the  first.  What  in 
God's  name  have  you  to  offer  a  creature  of  such  claims,  such 
ambitions  ?  You  are  poor — you  must  go  back  to  Oxford — you 
must  take  up  the  work  your  soul  loathes — grow  more  soured, 
more  embittered — maintain  a  useless  degrading  struggle,  till 
her  youth  is  done,  her  beauty  wasted,  and  till  you  yourself  have 
lost  every  shred  of  decency  and  dignity,  even  that  decorous 

2o 


450  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

outward  life  in  which  you  can  still  wrap  yourself  from  the 
world  !  Think  of  the  little  house — the  children — the  mouey 
difficulties — she,  spiritually  starved,  every  illusion  gone, — you 
incapable  soon  of  love,  incapable  even  of  pity,  conscious  only  of 
a  dull  rage  with  her,  yourself,  the  world !  Bow  the  neck — 
submit — refuse  that  long  agony  for  yourself  and  her,  while 
there  is  still  time.  Kismet — Kismet  I ' 

And  spread  out  before  Langham's  shrinking  soul  there  lay  a 
whole  dismal  Hogarthian  series,  image  leading  to  image, 
calamity  to  calamity,  till  in  the  last  scene  of  all  the  maddened 
inward  sight  perceived  two  figures,  two  gray  and  withered 
figures,  far  apart,  gazing  at  each  other  with  cold  and  sunken 
eyes  across  dark  rivers  of  sordid  irremediable  regret. 

The  hours  passed  away,  and  in  the  end,  the  spectre  self,  a 
cold  and  bloodless  conqueror,  slipped  back  into  the  soul  which 
remorse  and  terror,  love  and  pity,  a  last  impulse  of  hope,  a  last 
stirring  of  manhood,  had  been  alike  powerless  to  save. 

The  February  dawn  was  just  beginning  when  he  dragged 
himself  to  a  table  and  wrote. 

Then  for  hours  afterwards  he  sat  sunk  in  his  chair,  the  stupor 
of  fatigue  broken  every  now  and  then  by  a  flash  of  curious 
introspection.  It  was  a  base  thing  which  he  had  done — it  was 
also  a  strange  thing  psychologically ;  and  at  intervals  he  tried 
to  understand  it,  to  track  it  to  its  causes. 

At  nine  o'clock  he  crept  out  into  the  frosty  daylight,  found 
a  commissionaire  who  was  accustomed  to  do  errands  for  him, 
and  sent  him  with  a  letter  to  Lerwick  Gardens. 

On  his  way  back  he  passed  a  gunsmith's,  and  stood  looking 
fascinated  at  the  shining  barrels.  Then  he  moved  away, 
shaking  his  head,  his  eyes  gleaming  as  though  the  spectacle  of 
Mmself  had  long  ago  passed  the  bounds  of  tragedy — become 
farcical  even. 

'  I  should  only  stand  a  month — arguing — with  my  finger  on 
the  trigger.' 

In  the  little  hall  his  landlady  met  him,  gave  a  start  at  the 
sight  of  him,  and  asked  him  if  he  ailed  and  if  she  could  do  any- 
thing for  him.  He  gave  her  a  sharp  answer  and  went  upstairs, 
where  she  heard  him  dragging  books  and  boxes  about  as  though 
lie  were  packing. 

A  little  later  Rose  was  standing  at  the  dining-room  window 
of  No.  27,  looking  on  to  a  few  trees  bedecked  with  rime  which 
stood  outside.  The  ground  and  roofs  were  white,  a  promise  of 
sun  was  struggling  through  the  fog.  So  far  everything  in  these 
unfrequented  Campden  Hill  roads  was  clean,  crisp,  enlivening, 
and  the  sparkle  in  Rose's  mood  answered  to  that  of  Nature. 

Breakfast  had  just  been  cleared  away.  Agnes  was  upstairs 
with  Mrs.  Leyburn.  Catherine,  who  was  staying  in  the  house 
for  a  day  or  two,  was  in  a  chair  by  the  fire  reading  some  letters 
forwarded  to  her  from  Bedford  Square. 

He  would  appear  some  time  in  the  morning,  she  supposed. 


CHAP,  xxxvi  ROSE  451 

With  an  expression  half  rueful,  half  amused,  she  fell  to  imagin- 
ing his  interview  with  Catherine,  with  her  mother.  Poor 
Catherine !  Rose  feels  herself  happy  enough  to  allow  herself 
a  good  honest  pang  of  remorse  for  much  of  her  behaviour  to 
Catherine  this  winter ;  how  thorny  she  has  been,  how  unkind 
often,  to  this  sad  changed  sister.  And  now  this  will  be  a  fresh 
blow  !  '  But  afterwards,  when  she  has  got  over  it, — when  she 
knows  that  it  makes  me  happy,— that  nothing  else  would  make 
me  happy, — then  she  will  be  reconciled,  and  she  and  I  perhaps 
will  make  friends,  all  over  again,  from  the  beginning.  I  won't 
be  angry  or  hard  over  it — poor  Cathie  ! ' 

And  with  regard  to  Mr.  Flaxman.  As  she  stands  there  wait- 
ing idly  for  what  destiny  may  send  her,  she  puts  herself  through 
a  little  light  catechism  about  this  other  friend  of  hers.  He 
had  behaved  somewhat  oddly  towards  her  of  late ;  she  begins 
now  to  remember  that  her  exit  from  Lady  Charlotte's  house 
the  night  before  had  been  a  very  different  matter  from  the 
royally  attended  leave-takings,  presided  over  by  Mr.  Flaxman, 
which  generally  befell  her  there.  Had  he  understood  1  With  a 
little  toss  of  her  head  she  said  to  herself  that  she  did  not  care  if 
it  was  so.  '  I  have  never  encouraged  Mr.  Flaxman  to  think  I 
was  going  to  marry  him.' 

But  of  course  Mr.  Flaxman  will  consider  she  has  done  badly 
for  herself.  So  will  Lady  Charlotte  and  all  her  outer  world. 
They  will  say  she  is  dismally  throwing  herself  away,  and  her 
mother,  no  doubt  influenced  by  the  clamour,  will  take  up  very 
much  the  same  line. 

What  matter  !  The  girl's  spirit  seemed  to  rise  against  all  the 
world.  There  was  a  sort  of  romantic  exaltation  in  her  sacrifice 
of  herself,  a  jubilant  looking  forward  to  remonstrance,  a  wilful 
determination  to  overcome  it.  That  she  was  about  to  do  the 
last  thing  she  could  have  been  expected  to  do,  gave  her  pleasure. 
Almost  all  artistic  faculty  goes  with  a  love  of  surprise  and 
caprice  in  life.  Rose  had  her  full  share  of  the  artistic  love  for 
the  impossible  and  the  difficult. 

Besides — success  !  To  make  a  man  hope  and  love,  and  live 
again — that  shall  be  her  success.  She  leaned  against  the  window, 
her  eyes  filling,  her  heart  very  soft. 

Suddenly  she  saw  a  commissionaire  coming  up  the  little 
flagged  passage  to  the  door.  He  gave  in  a  note,  and  immediately 
afterwards  the  dining-room  door  opened. 

'  A  letter  for  you,  Miss,'  said  the  maid. 

Rose  took  it — glanced  at  the  handwriting.  A  bright  flush — 
a  surreptitious  glance  at  Catherine  who  sat  absorbed  in  a 
wandering  letter  from  Mrs.  Darcy.  Then  the  girl  carried  her 
prize  to  the  window  and  opened  it. 

Catherine  read  on,  gathering  up  the  Murewell  names  and 
details  as  some  famished  gleaner  might  gather  up  the  scattered 
ears  on  a  plundered  field.  At  last  something  in  the  silence  of  the 
room,  and  of  the  other  inmate  in  it,  struck  her. 


452  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

'  Rose,'  she  said,  looking  up,  '  was  that  some  one  brought  you 
a  note  ? ' 

The  girl  turned  with  a  start — a  letter  fell  to  the  ground. 
She  made  a  faint  ineffectual  effort  to  pick  it  up,  and  sank  into 
a  chair. 

'Rose — darling  !'  cried  Catherine,  springing  up,  'are  you  ill  ?' 

Rose  looked  at  her  with  a  perfectly  colourless  fixed  face, 
made  a  feeble  negative  sign,  and  then  laying  her  arms  on  the 
breakfast-table  in  front  of  her,  let  her  head  fall  upon  them. 

Catherine  stood  over  her  aghast.  '  My  darling — what  is  it  ? 
Come  and  lie  down — take  this  water.' 

She  put  some  close  to  her  sister's  hand,  but  Rose  pushed  it 
away.  '  Don't  talk  to  me,'  she  said  with  difficulty. 

Catherine  knelt  beside  her  in  helpless  pain  and  perplexity, 
her  cheek  resting  against  her  sister  s  shoulder  as  a  mute  sign 
of  sympathy.  What  could  be  the  matter?  Presently  her 
gaze  travelled  from  Rose  to  the  letter  on  the  floor.  It  lay 
with  the  address  uppermost,  and  she  at  once  recognised  Lang- 
ham's  handwriting.  But  before  she  could  combine  any  rational 
ideas  with  this  quick  perception,  Rose  had  partially  mastered 
herself.  She  raised  her  head  slowly  and  grasped  her  sister's 
arm.  • 

'  I  was  startled,'  she  said,  a  forced  smile  on  her  white  lips. 
'  Last  night  Mr.  Langham  asked  me  to  marry  him — I  expected 
him  here  this  morning  to  consult  with  mamma  and  you.  That 
letter  is  to  inform  me  that — he  made  a  mistake — and  he  is  very 
sorry  !  So  am  I !  It  is  so — so — bewildering  ! ' 

She  got  up  restlessly  and  went  to  the  fire  as  though  shivering 
with  cold.  Catherine  thought  she  hardly  knew  what  she  was 
saying.  The  elder  sister  followed  her,  and  throwing  an  arm 
round  her,  pressed  the  slim  irresponsive  figure  close.  Her  eyes 
were  bright  with  anger,  her  lips  quivering. 

'That  he  should  dare/'  she  cried.  'Rose — my  poor  little 
Rose.' 

'  Don't  blame  him  ! '  said  Rose,  crouching  down  before  the 
fire,  while  Catherine  fell  into  the  armchair  again.  '  It  doesn't 
seem  to  count,  from  you — you  have  always  been  so  ready  to 
blame  him  ! ' 

Her  brow  contracted  ;  she  looked  frowning  into  the  fire,  her 
still  colourless  mouth  working  painfully. 

Catherine  was  cut  to  the  heart.  '  Oh,  Rose  ! '  she  said,  hold- 
ing out  her  hands,  '  I  will  blame  no  one,  dear.  I  seem  hard — 
but  I  love  you  so.  Oh,  tell  me— you  would  have  told  me  every- 
thing once ! ' 

There  was  the  most  painful  yearning  in  her  tone.  Rose  lifted 
a  listless  right  hand  and  put  it  into  her  sister's  outstretched 
palms.  But  she  made  no  answer,  till  suddenly,  with  a  smothered 
cry,  she  fell  towards  Catherine. 

'  Catherine  !  I  cannot  bear  it.  I  said  I  loved  him — he  kissed 
me — I  could  kill  myself  and  him.' 


CHAP,  xxxvi  ROSE  453 

Catherine  never  forgot  the  mingled  tragedy  and  domesticity 
of  the  hour  that  followed — the  little  familiar  morning  sounds 
in  and  about  the  house,  maids  running  up  and  down  stairs, 
tradesmen  calling,  bells  ringing, — and  here,  at  her  feet,  a  spec- 
tacle of  moral  and  mental  struggle  which  she  only  half  under- 
stood, but  which  wrung  her  inmost  heart.  Two  strains  of 
feeling  seemed  to  be  present  in  Rose  —  a  sense  of  shock,  of 
wounded  pride,  of  intolerable  humiliation,  and  a  strange  inter- 
vening passion  of  pity,  not  for  herself  but  for  Langham,  which 
seemed  to  have  been  stirred  in  her  by  his  letter.  But  though 
the  elder  questioned,  and  the  younger  seemed  to  answer, 
Catherine  could  hardly  piece  the  story  together,  nor  could  she 
find  the  answer  to  the  question  filling  her  own  indignant  heart, 
'  Does  she  love  him  ? ' 

At  last  Rose  got  up  from  her  crouching  position  by  the  fire 
and  stood,  a  white  ghost  of  herself,  pushing  back  the  bright 
encroaching  hair  from  eyes  that  were  dry  and  feverish. 

'  If  I  could  only  be  angry — downright  angry,'  she  said,  more 
to  herself  than  Catherine,  it  would  do  one  good.' 

'  Give  others  leave  to  be  angry  for  you  ! '  cried  Catherine. 

'  Don't ! '  said  Rose,  almost  fiercely,  drawing  herself  away. 
'  You  don't  know.  It  is  a  fate.  Why  did  we  ever  meet  ?  You 
may  read  his  letter ;  you  must — you  misjudge  him — you  always 
have.  No,  no' — and  she  nervously  crushed  the  letter  in  her 
hand — 'not  yet.  But  you  shall  read  it  some  time — you  and 
Robert  too.  Married  people  always  tell  one  another.  It  is  due 
to  him,  perhaps  due  to  me  too,'  and  a  hot  flush  transfigured  her 
paleness  for  an  instant.  '  Oh,  my  head  !  Why  does  one's  mind 
affect  one's  body  like  this  ?  It  shall  not — it  is  humiliating ! 
"Miss  Ley  burn  has  been  jilted  and  cannot  see  visitors," — that 
is  the  kind  of  thing.  Catherine,  when  you  have  finished  that 
document,  will  you  kindly  come  and  hear  me  practise  my  last 
Raff — I  am  going.  Good-bye.' 

She  moved  to  the  door,  but  Catherine  had  only  just  time  to 
catch  hei',  or  she  would  have  fallen  over  a  chair  from  sudden 
giddiness. 

'  Miserable  ! '  she  said,  dashing  a  tear  from  her  eyes,  '  I  must 
go  and  lie  down  then  in  the  proper  missish  fashion.  Mind,  on 
your  peril,  Catherine,  not  a  word  to  any  one  but  Robert.  I 
shall  tell  Agnes.  And  Robert  is  not  to  speak  to  me !  No, 
don't  come — I  will  go  alone.' 

And  warning  her  sister  back,  she  groped  her  way  upstairs. 
Inside  her  room,  when  she  had  locked  the  door,  she  stood  a 
moment  upright  with  the  letter  in  her  hand, — the  blotted  inco- 
herent scrawl,  where  Langham  had  for  once  forgotten  to  be 
literary,  where  every  pitiable  half -finished  sentence  pleaded 
with  her — even  in  the  first  smart  of  her  wrong — for  pardon, 
for  compassion,  as  towards  something  maimed  and  paralysed 
from  birth,  unworthy  even  of  her  contempt.  Then  the  tears 
began  to  rain  over  her  cheeks. 


454  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

'  I  was  not  good  enough — I  was  not  good  enough — God  would 
not  let  me ! ' 

And  she  fell  on  her  knees  beside  the  bed,  the  little  bit  of 
paper  crushed  in  her  hands  against  her  lips.  Not  good  enough 
for  what  ?  To  save  ? 

How  lightly  she  had  dreamed  of  healing,  redeeming,  chang- 
ing !  And  the  task  is  refused  her.  It  is  not  so  much  the  cry 
of  personal  desire  that  shakes  her  as  she  kneels  and  weeps, 
nor  is  it  mere  wounded  woman's  pride.  It  is  a  strange  stern 
sense  of  law.  Had  she  been  other  than  she  is — more  loving, 
less  self-absorbed,  loftier  in  motive — he  could  not  have  loved 
her  so,  have  left  her  so.  Deep  undeveloped  forces  of  character 
stir  within  her.  She  feels  herself  judged, — and  with  a  righteous 
judgment — issuing  inexorably  from  the  facts  of  life  and  circum- 
stance. 

Meanwhile  Catherine  was  shut  up  downstairs  with  Robert, 
who  had  come  over  early  to  see  how  the  household  fared. 

Robert  listened  to  the  whole  luckless  story  with  astonish- 
ment and  dismay.  This  particular  possibility  of  mischief  had 
gone  out  of  his  mind  for  some  time.  He  had  been  busy  in  his 
East  End  work.  Catherine  had  been  silent.  Over  how  many 
matters  they  would  once  have  discussed  with  open  heart  was 
she  silent  now  ? 

'  I  ought  to  have  been  warned,'  he  said  with  quick  decision, 
'if  you  knew  this  was  going  on.  I  am  the  only  man  among 
you,  and  I  understand  Langham  better  than  the  rest  of  you. 
I  might  have  looked  after  the  poor  child  a  little.' 

Catherine  accepted  the  reproach  mutely  as  one  little  smart 
the  more.  However,  what  had  she  known?  She  had  seen 
nothing  unusual  of  late,  nothing  to  make  her  think  a  crisis  was 
approaching.  Nay,  she  had  nattered  herself  that  Mr.  Flaxman, 
whom  she  liked,  was  gaining  ground. 

Meanwhile  Robert  stood  pondering  anxiously  what  could  be 
done.  Could  anything  be  done  ? 

'  I  must  go  and  see  him,'  he  said  presently.  '  Yes,  dearest,  I 
must.  Impossible  the  thing  should  be  left  so !  I  am  his  old 
friend, — almost  her  guardian.  You  say  she  is  in  great  trouble 
— why,  it  may  shadow  her  whole  life !  No — he  must  explain 
things  to  us — he  is  bound  to — he  shall.  It  may  be  something 
comparatively  trivial  in  the  way  after  all — money  or  prospects  or 
something  of  the  sort.  You  have  not  seen  the  letter,  you  say  ? 
It  is  the  last  marriage  in  the  world  one  could  have  desired 
for  her — but  if  she  loves  him,  Catherine,  if  she  loves  him — 

He  turned  to  her — appealing,  remonstrating.  Catherine 
stood  pale  and  rigid.  Incredible  that  he  should  think  it  right 
to  intermeddle — to  take  the  smallest  step  towards  reversing  so 
plain  a  declaration  of  God's  will !  She  could  not  sympathise — 
she  would  not  consent.  Robert  watched  her  in  painful  indecision. 
He  knew  that  she  thought  him  indifferent  to  her  true  reason 


CHAP,  xxxvi  ROSE  455 

for  finding  some  comfort  even  in  her  sister's  trouble — that  he 
seemed  to  her  mindful  only  of  the  passing  human  misery,  in- 
different to  the  eternal  risk. 

They  stood  sadly  looking  at  one  another.  Then  he  snatched 
up  his  hat. 

'  I  must  go,'  he  said  in  a  low  voice  ;  '  it  is  right.' 

And  he  went — stepping,  however,  with  the  best  intentions  in 
the  world,  into  a  blunder. 

Catherine  sat  painfully  struggling  with  herself  after  he  had 
left  her.  Then  some  one  came  into  the  room — some  one  with 
pale  looks  and  flashing  eyes.  It  was  Agnes. 

'  She  just  let  me  in  to  tell  me,  and  put  me  out  again,'  said  the 
girl — her  whole,  even,  cheerful  self  one  flame  of  scorn  and  wrath. 
'  What  are  such  creatures  made  for,  Catherine — why  do  they 
exist?' 

Meanwhile,  Robert  had  trudged  off  through  the  frosty 
morning  streets  to  Langham's  lodgings.  His  mood  was  very 
hot  by  the  time  he  reached  his  destination,  and  he  climbed  the 
staircase  to  Langham's  room  in  some  excitement.  When  he 
tried  to  open  the  door  after  the  answer  to  his  knock  bidding 
him  enter,  he  found  something  barring  the  way.  '  Wait  a  little,' 
said  the  voice  inside,  '  I  will  move  the  case.' 

With  difficulty  the  obstacle  was  removed  and  the  door  opened. 
Seeing  his  visitor,  Langham  stood  for  a  moment  in  sombre 
astonishment.  The  room  was  littered  with  books  and  packing- 
cases  with  which  he  had  been  busy. 

'  Come  in,'  he  said,  not  offering  to  shake  hands. 

Eobert  shut  the  door,  and,  picking  his  way  among  the  books, 
stood  leaning  on  the  back  of  the  chair  Langham  pointed  out  to 
him.  Langham  paused  opposite  to  him,  Ms  waving  jet-black 
hair  falling  forward  over  the  marble  pale  face  which  had  been 
Robert's  young  ideal  of  manly  beauty. 

The  two  men  were  only  six  years  distant  in  age,  but  so  strong 
is  old  association  that  Robert's  feeling  towards  his  friend  had 
id  ways  remained  in  many  respects  the  feeling  of  the  under- 
graduate towards  the  don.  His  sense  of  it  now  filled  him  witli 
a  curious  awkwardness. 

'  I  know  why  you  are  come,'  said  Langham  slowly,  after  a 
scrutiny  of  his  visitor. 

'  I  am  here  by  a  mere  accident,'  said  the  other,  thinking 
perfect  frankness  best.  '  My  wife  was  present  when  her  sister 
received  your  letter.  Rose  gave  her  leave  to  tell  me.  I  had 
gone  up  to  ask  after  them  all,  and  came  on  to  you, — of  course 
on  my  own  responsibility  entirely  !  Rose  knows  nothing  of  my 
(joining — nothing  of  what  I  have  to  say.' 

He  paused,  struck  against  his  will  by  the  looks  of  the  man 
before  him.  Whatever  he  had  done  during  the  past  twenty- 
four  hours  he  had  clearly  had  the  grace  to  suffer  in  the  doing 
of  it. 

'  You  can  have   nothing  to  say ! '   said   Langham,   leaning 


456  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

against  the  chimneypiece  and  facing  him  with  black,  darkly- 
burning  eyes.     '  You  know  me.' 

Never  had  Robert  seen  him  under  this  aspect.  All  the 
despair,  all  the  •  bitterness  hidden  under  the  languid  student's 
exterior  of  every  day,  had,  as  it  were,  risen  to  the  surface.  He 
stood  at  bay,  against  his  friend,  against  himself. 

'  No  ! '  exclaimed  Eobert  stoutly,  '  I  do  not  know  you  in  the 
sense  you  mean.  I  do  not  know  you  as  the  man  who  could 
beguile  a  girl  on  to  a  confession  of  love,  and  then  tell  her  that 
for  you  marriage  was  too  great  a  burden  to  be  faced  ! ' 

Langham  started,  and  then  closed  his  lips  in  an  iron  silence. 
Robert  repented  him  a  little.  Langham's  strange  individuality 
always  impressed  him  against  his  will. 

'  I  did  not  come  simply  to  reproach  you,  Langham,'  he  went 
on,  '  though  I  confess  to  being  very  hot !  I  came  to  try  and 
find  out — for  myself  only,  mind — whether  what  prevents  you 
from  following  up  what  I  understand  happened  last  night  is 
really  a  matter  of  feeling,  or  a  matter  of  outward  circumstance. 
If,  upon  reflection,  you  find  that  your  feeling  for  Rose  is  not 
what  you  imagined  it  to  be,  I  shall  have  my  own  opinion  about 
your  conduct — but  I  shall  be  the  first  to  acquiesce  in  what  you 
have  done  this  morning.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  you  are  simply 
afraid  of  yourself  in  harness,  and  afraid  of  the  responsibilities 
of  practical  married  life,  I  cannot  help  begging  you  to  talk  the 
matter  over  with  me,  and  let  us  face  it  together.  Whether  Rose 
would  ever,  under  any  circumstances,  get  over  the  shock  of  this 
morning  I  have  not  the  remotest  idea.  But ' — and  he  hesitated — 
'  it  seems  the  feeling  you  appealed  to  yesterday  has  been  of  long 
growth.  You  know  perfectly  well  what  havoc  a  thing  of  this 
kind  may  make  in  a  girl's  life.  I  don't  say  it  will.  But,  at  any 
rate,  it  is  all  so  desperately  serious  I  could  not  hold  my  hand. 
I  am  doing  what  is  no  doubt  wholly  unconventional ;  but  I  am 
your  friend  and  her  brother ;  I  brought  you  together,  and  I 
ask  you  to  take  me  into  counsel  If  you  had  but  done  it 
before ! ' 

There  was  a  moment's  dead  silence. 

'  You  cannot  pretend  to  believe,'  said  Langham  at  last,  with 
the  same  sombre  self-containedness,  '  that  a  marriage  with  me 
would  be  for  your  sister-in-law's  happiness  ? ' 

'  I  don't  know  what  to  believe ! '  cried  Robert.  '  No,'  he 
added  frankly,  '  no  ;  when  I  saw  you  first  attracted  by  Rose  at 
Murewell  I  disliked  the  idea  heartily ;  I  was  glad  to  see  you 
separated  ;  a  priwi,  I  never  thought  you  suited  to  each  other. 
But  reasoning  that  holds  good  when  a  thing  is  wholly  in  the 
air  looks  very  different  when  a  man  has  committed  himself  and 
another,  as  you  have  done.' 

Langham  surveyed  him  for  a  moment,  then  shook  his  hair 
impatiently  from  his  eyes  and  rose  from  his  bending  position 
by  the  fire. 

Elsinere,  there  is  nothing  to  be  said !     I  have  behaved  as 


CHAP,  xxxvi  ROSE  457 

vilely  as  you  please.  I  have  forfeited  your  friendship.  But  I 
should  be  an  even  greater  fiend  and  weakling  than  you  think 
me  if,  in  cold  blood,  I  could  let  your  sister  run  the  risk  of 
marrying  me.  I  could  not  trust  myself — you  may  think  of  the 
statement  as  you  like — I  should  make  her  miserable.  Last  night 
I  had  not  parted  from  her  an  hour  before  I  was  utterly  and 
Irrevocably  sure  of  it.  My  habits  are  my  masters.  I  believe,' 
he  added  slowly,  his  eyes  fixed  weirdly  on  something  beyond 
Robert,  '  I  could  even  grow  to  hate  what  came  between  me  and 
them ! ' 

Was  it  the  last  word  of  the  man's  life?  It  struck  Robert 
with  a  kind  of  shiver. 

'  Pray  heaven,'  he  said  with  a  groan,  getting  up  to  go,  '  you 
may  not  have  made  her  miserable  already  ! ' 

'Did  it  hurt  her  so  much?'  asked  Langham  almost  inaudibly, 
turning  away,  Robert's  tone  meanwhile  calling  up  a  new  and 
scorching  image  in  the  subtle  brain  tissue. 

'  I  have  not  seen  her,'  said  Robert  abruptly ;  '  but  when  I 
came  in  I  found  my  wife — who  has  no  light  tears — weeping  for 
her  sister.' 

His  voice  dropped  as  though  what  he  were  saying  were  in 
truth  too  pitiful  and  too  intimate  for  speech. 

Langham  said  no  more.  His  face  had  become  a  marble  mask 
again. 

'  Good-bye ! '  said  Robert,  taking  up  his  hat  with  a  dismal 
sense  of  having  got  foolishly  through  a  fool's  errand.  'As  I 
said  to  you  before,  what  Rose's  feeling  is  at  this  moment  I  can- 
not even  guess.  Very  likely  she  would  be  the  first  to  repudiate 
half  of  what  I  have  been  saying.  Aiid  I  see  that  you  will  not 
talk  to  me — you  will  not  take  me  into  your  confidence  and 
speak  to  me  not  only  as  her  brother  but  as  your  friend.  And — 
and — are  you  going  ?  What  does  this  mean  ? ' 

He  looked  interrogatively  at  the  open  packing-cases. 

'  I  am  going  back  to  Oxford,'  said  the  other  briefly.  '  I  can- 
not stay  in  these  rooms,  in  these  streets.' 

Robert  was  sore  perplexed.  What  real — nay,  what  terrible 
suffering — in  the  face  and  manner,  and  yet  how  futile,  how 
needless  !  He  felt  himself  wrestling  with  something  intangible 
and  phantom-like,  wholly  unsubstantial,  and  yet  endowed  with 
a  ghastly  indefinite  power  over  human  life. 

'It  is  very  hard,  he  said  hurriedly,  moving  nearer,  'that 
our  old  friendship  should  be  crossed  like  this.  Do  trust  me  a 
little  !  You  are  always  undervaluing  yourself.  Why  not  take 
a  friend  into  council  sometimes  when  you  sit  in  judgment  on 
yourself  and  your  possibilities  ?  Your  own  perceptions  are  all 
warped ! ' 

Langham,  looking  at  him,  thought  his  smile  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  and  one  of  the  most  irrelevant  things  he  had 
ever  seen. 

'  I  will  write  to  you,  Elsmere,'  he  said,  holding  out  his  hand, 


458  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  v 

'speech  is  impossible  to  me.  I  never  had  any  words  except 
through  my  pen.' 

Robert  gave  it  up.  In  another  minute  Langham  was  left 
alone. 

But  he  did  no  more  packing  for  hours.  He  spent  the  middle 
of  the  day  sitting  dumb  and  immovable  in  his  chair.  Imagina- 
tion was  at  work  again  more  feverishly  than  ever.  He  was  tor- 
tured by  a  fixed  image  of  Rose,  suffering  and  paling. 

And  after  a  certain  number  of  hours  he  could  no  more  bear 
the  incubus  of  this  thought  than  he  could  put  up  with  the  flat 
prospects  of  married  life  the  night  before.  He  was  all  at  sea, 
barely  sane,  in  fact.  His  life  had  been  so  long  purely  intel- 
lectual that  this  sudden  strain  of  passion  and  fierce  practical 
interests  seemed  to  unhinge  him,  to  destroy  his  mental  balance. 

He  bethought  him.  This  afternoon  he  knew  she  had  a  last 
rehearsal  at  Searle  House.  Afterwards  her  custom  was  to  come 
back  from  St.  James's  Park  to  High  Street,  Kensington,  and 
walk  up  the  hill  to  her  own  home.  He  knew  it,  for  on  two 
occasions  after  these  rehearsals  he  had  been  at  Lerwick  Gardens, 
waiting  for  her,  with  Agnes  and  Mrs.  Leyburn.  Would  she  go 
this  afternoon  1  A  subtle  instinct  told  him  that  she  would. 

It  was  nearly  six  o'clock  that  evening  when  Rose,  stepping 
out  from  the  High  Street  station,  crossed  the  "main  road  and 
passed  into  the  darkness  of  one  of  the  streets  leading  up  the 
hill.  She  had  forced  herself  to  go,  and  she  would  go  alone. 
But  as  she  toiled  along  she  felt  weary  and  bruised  all  over. 
She  carried  with  her  a  heart  of  lead — a  sense  of  utter  soreness 
— a  longing  to  hide  herself  from  eyes  and  tongues.  The  only 
thing  that  dwelt  softly  in  the  shaken  mind  was  a  sort  of  incon- 
sequent memory  of  Mr.  Flaxman's  manner  at  the  rehearsal. 
Had  she  looked  so  ill  1  She  flushed  hotly  at  the  thought,  and 
then  realised  again,  with  a  sense  of  childish  comfort,  the  kind  look 
and  voice,  the  delicate  care  shown  in  shielding  her  from  any  un- 
necessary exertion,  the  brotherly  grasp  of  the  hand  with  which 
he  had  put  her  into  the  cab  that  took  her  to  the  Underground. 

Suddenly,  where  the  road  made  a  dark  turn  to  the  right,  she 
saw  a  man  standing.  As  she  came  nearer  she  saw  that  it  was 
Langham. 

'  You  ! '  she  cried,  stopping. 

He  came  up  to  her.  There  was  a  light  over  the  doorway  of 
a  large  detached  house  not  far  off,  which  threw  a  certain  illumi- 
nation over  him,  though  it  left  her  in  shadow.  He  said  nothing, 
but  he  held  out  both  his  hands  mutely.  She  fancied  rather 
than  saw  the  pale  emotion  of  his  look. 

'  What  ? '  she  said,  after  a  pause.  '  You  think  to-night  is  last 
night !  You  and  I  have  nothing  to  say  to  each  other,  Mr. 
Langham.' 

'I  have  everything  to  say,'  he  answered,  under  his  breath; 
'  I  have  committed  a  crime — a  villainy.' 


CHAP,  xxxvi  ROSE  459 

'And  it  is  not  pleasant  to  you?'  she  said,  quivering.  'I  am 
sorry — 1  cannot  help  you.  But  you  are  wrong — it  was  no  crime 
— it  was  necessary  and  profitable,  like  the  doses  of  one's  child- 
hood !  Oh !  I  might  have  guessed  you  would  do  this !  No, 
Mr.  Langham,  I  am  in  no  danger  of  an  interesting  decline.  I 
have  just  played  my  concerto  very  fairly.  I  shall  not  disgrace 
myself  at  the  concert  to-morrow  night.  You  may  be  at  peace — 
I  have  learnt  several  things  to-day  that  have  been  salutary — 
very  salutary.' 

She  paused.  He  walked  beside  her  while  she  pelted  him, — 
unresisting,  helplessly  silent. 

'  Don't  come  any  farther,'  she  said  resolutely  after  a  minute, 
turning  to  face  him.  '  Let  us  be  quits !  I  was  a  temptingly 
easy  prey.  I  bear  no  malice.  And  do  not  let  me  break  your 
friendship  with  Eobert ;  that  began  before  this  foolish  business 
— it  should  outlast  it.  Very  likely  we  shall  be  friends  again, 
like  ordinary  people,  some  day.  I  do  not  imagine  your  wound 
is  very  deep,  and ' 

But  no !  Her  lips  closed ;  not  even  for  pride's  sake,  and 
retort's  sake,  will  she  desecrate  the  past,  belittle  her  own  first 
love. 

She  held  out  her  hand.  It  was  very  dark.  He  could  see 
nothing  among  her  furs  but  the  gleaming  whiteness  of  her  face. 
The  whole  personality  seemed  centred  in  the  voice — the  half- 
mocking  vibrating  voice.  He  took  her  hand  and  dropped  it 
instantly. 

'You  do  not  understand,'  he  said  hopelessly — feeling  as 
though  every  phrase  he  uttered,  or  could  utter,  were  equally 
fatuous,  equally  shameful.  'Thank  heaven,  you  never  will 
understand.' 

'  I  think  I  do,'  she  said  with  a  change  of  tone,  and  paused. 
He  raised  his  eyes  involuntarily,  met  hers,  and  stood  bewildered. 
What  was  the  expression  in  them  ?  It  was  yearning — but  not 
the  yearning  of  passion.  '  If  things  had  been  different — if  one 
could  change  the  self — if  the  past  were  nobler  ! ' — was  that  the 
cry  of  them  1  A  painful  humility — a  boundless  pity — the  rise 
of  some  moral  wave  within  her  he  could  neither  measure  nor 
explain — these  were  some  of  the  impressions  which  passed  from 
her  to  him.  A  fresh  gulf  opened  between  them,  and  he  saw  her 
transformed  on  the  farther  side,  with,  as  it  were,  a  loftier 
gesture,  a  nobler  stature,  than  had  ever  yet  been  hers. 

He  bent  forward  quickly,  caught  her  hands,  held  them  for 
an  instant  to  his  lips  in  a  convulsive  grasp,  dropped  them,  and 
was  gone. 

He  gained  his  own  room  again.  There  lay  the  medley  of  his 
books,  his  only  friends,  his  real  passion.  Why  had  he  ever 
tampered  with  any  other  ? 

'  It  was  not  love — not  love  ! '  he  said  to  himself,  with  an  accent 
of  infinite  relief  as  he  sank  into  his  chair.  ''Her  smart  will 
heal' 


BOOK  VI 

NEW    OPENINGS 


17   /FOO 


CHAPTEK  XXXVII 

TEN  days  after  Langham's  return  to  Oxford  Elsmere  received 
a  characteristic  letter  from  him:  asking  whether  their  friend- 
ship was  to  be  considered  as  still  existing  or  at  an  end.  The 
calm  and  even  proud  melancholy  of  the  letter  showed  a  con- 
siderable subsidence  of  that  state  of  half -frenzied  irritation 
and  discomfort  in  which  Elsmere  had  last  seen  him.  The  writer, 
indeed,  was  clearly  settling  down  into  another  period  of  pessi- 
mistic quietism  such  as  that  which  had  followed  upon  his  first 
young  efforts  at  self-assertion  years  before.  But  this  second 
period  bore  the  marks  of  an  even  profounder  depression  of  all 
the  vital  forces  than  the  first,  and  as  Elsmere,  with  a  deep  sigh, 
half-angry,  half -relenting,  put  down  the  letter,  he  felt  the  con- 
viction that  no  fresh  influence  from  outside  would  ever  again  be 
allowed  to  penetrate  the  solitude  of  Langham's  life.  In  com- 
parison with  the  man  who  had  just  addressed  him,  the  tutor  of 
his  undergraduate  recollections  was  a  vigorous  and  sociable 
human  being. 

The  relenting  grew  upon  him,  and  he  wrote  a  sensible  affec- 
tionate letter  in  return.  Whatever  had  been  his  natural  feelings 
of  resentment,  he  said,  he  could  not  realise,  now  that  the  crisis 
was  past,  that  he  cared  less  about  his  old  friend.  'As  far  as  we 
two  are  concerned,  let  us  forget  it  all.  I  could  hardly  say  this, 
you  will  easily  imagine,  if  I  thought  that  you  had  done  serious 
or  irreparable  harm.  But  both  my  wife  and  I  agree  now  in 
thinking  that  by  a  pure  accident,  as  it  were,  and  to  her  own 
surprise,  Rose  has  escaped  either.  It  will  be  some  time,  no 
doubt,  before  she  will  admit  it.  A  girl  is  not  so  easily  disloyal 
to  her  past.  But  to  us  it  is  tolerably  clear.  At  any  rate,  I  send 
you  our  opinion  for  what  it  is  worth,  believing  that  it  will  and 
must  be  welcome  to  you.' 

Rose,  however,  was  not  so  long  in  admitting  it.  One  marked 
result  of  that  new  vulnerableness  of  soul  produced  in  her  by  the 
shock  of  that  February  morning  was  a  great  softening  towards 
Catherine.  Whatever  might  have  been  Catherine's  intense 
relief  when  Robert  returned  from  his  abortive  mission,  she 
never  afterwards  let  a  disparaging  word  towards  Langham 
escape  her  lips  to  Rose.  She  was  tenderness  and  sympathy 


464  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

itself,  and  Rose,  in  her  curious  reaction  against  her  old  self, 
and  against  the  noisy  world  of  flattery  and  excitement  in  which 
she  had  been  living,  turned  to  Catherine  as  she  had  never  done 
since  she  was  a  tiny  child.  She  would  spend  hours  in  a  corner 
of  the  Bedford  Square  drawing-room,  pretending  to  read,  or 
play  with  little  Mary,  in  reality  recovering,  like  some  bruised 
and  trodden  plant,  under  the  healing  influence  of  thought  and 
silence. 

One  day,  when  they  were  alone  in  the  firelight,  she  startled 
Catherine  by  saying  with  one  of  her  old  odd  smiles — 

'  Do  you  know,  Cathie,  how  I  always  see  myself  nowadays  ? 
It  is  a  sort  of  hallucination.  I  see  a  girl  at  the  foot  of  a 
precipice.  She  has  had  a  fall,  and  she  is  sitting  up,  feeling 
all  her  limbs.  And,  to  her  great  astonishment,  there  is  no  bone 
broken ! ' 

And  she  held  herself  back  from  Catherine's  knee  lest  her 
sister  should  attempt  to  caress  her,  her  eyes  bright  and  calm. 
Nor  would  she  allow  an  answer,  drowning  all  that  Catherine 
might  have  said  in  a  sudden  rush  after  the  child,  who  was 
wandering  round  them  in  search  of  a  playfellow. 

In  truth,  Rose  Leyburn's  girlish  passion  for  Edward  Lang- 
ham  had  been  a  kind  of  accident  unrelated  to  the  main  forces 
of  character.  He  had  crossed  her  path  in  a  moment  of  discon- 
tent, of  aimless  revolt  and  longing,  when  she  was  but  fresh 
emerged  from  the  cramping  conditions  of  her  childhood  and 
trembling  on  the  brink  of  new  and  unknown  activities.  His 
intellectual  prestige,  his  melancholy,  his  personal  beauty,  his 
very  strangenesses  and  weaknesses,  had  made  a  deep  impression 
on  the  girl's  immature  romantic  sense.  His  resistance  had 
increased  the  charm,  and  the  interval  of  angry  resentful  separa- 
tion had  done  nothing  to  weaken  it.  As  to  the  months  in 
London,  they  had  been  one  long  duel  between  herself  and  him 
— a  duel  which  had  all  the  fascination  of  difficulty  and  uncer- 
tainty, but  in  which  pride  and  caprice  had  dealt  and  sustained 
a  large  proportion  of  the  blows.  Then,  after  a  moment  of 
intoxicating  victory,  Langham's  endangered  habits  and  threat- 
ened individuality  had  asserted  themselves  once  for  all.  And 
from  the  whole  long  struggle — passion,  exultation,  and  crushing 
defeat — it  often  seemed  to  her  that  she  had  gained  neither  joy 
nor  irreparable  grief,  but  a  new  birth  of  character,  a  soul ! 

It  may  be  easily  imagined  that  Hugh  Flaxman  felt  a  pe- 
culiarly keen  interest  in  Langham's  disappearance.  On  the 
afternoon  of  the  Searle  House  rehearsal  he  had  awaited  Rose's 
coming  in  a  state  of  extraordinary  irritation.  He  expected  a 
blushing  fiancee,  in  a  fool's  paradise,  asking  by  manner,  if  not 
by  word,  for  his  congratulations,  and  taking  a  decent  feminine 
pleasure  perhaps  in  the  pang  she  might  suspect  in  him.  And 
he  had  already  taken  his  pleasure  in  the  planning  of  some 
double-edged  congratulations. 

Then  up  the  steps  of  the  concert  platform  there  came  a  pale 


CHAP,  xxxvn  NEW  OPENINGS  465 

tired  girl,  who  seemed  specially  to  avoid  his  look,  who  found  a 
quiet  corner  and  said  hardly  a  word  to  anybody  till  her  turn 
came  to  play. 

His  revulsion  of  feeling  was  complete.  After  her  piece  he 
made  his  way  up  to  her,  and  was  her  watchful  unobtrusive 
guardian  for  the  rest  of  the  afternoon. 

He  walked  home  after  he  had  put  her  into  her  cab  in  a  whirl 
of  impatient  conjecture. 

'  As  compared  to  last  night,  she  looks  this  afternoon  as  if  she 
had  had  an  illness  !  What  on  earth  has  that  philandering  ass 
been  about  ?  If  he  did  not  propose  to  her  last  night,  he  ought 
to  be  shot — and  if  he  did,  a  fortiori,  for  clearly  she  is  miserable. 
But  what  a  brave  child  !  How  she  played  her  part !  I  wonder 
whether  she  thinks  that  /  saw  nothing,  like  all  the  rest !  Poor 
little  cold  hand  ! ' 

Next  day  in  the  street  he  met  Elsmere,  turned  and  walked 
with  him,  and  by  dint  of  leading  the  conversation  a  little 
discovered  that  Langham  had  left  London. 

Gone  !  But  not  without  a  crisis — that  was  evident.  During 
the  din  of  preparations  for  the  Searle  House  concert,  and  during 
the  meetings  which  it  entailed,  now  at  the  Varleys',  now  at  the 
house  of  some  other  connection  of  his — for  the  concert  was  the 
work  of  his  friends,  and  given  in  the  town  house  of  his  decrepit 
great-uncle,  Lord  Daniel — he  had  many  opportunities  of  observ- 
ing Rose.  And  he  felt  a  soft  indefinable  change  in  her  which 
kept  him  in  a  perpetual  answering  vibration  of  sympathy  and 
curiosity.  She  seemed  to  him  for  the  moment  to  have  lost  her 
passionate  relish  for  living,  that  relish  which  had  always  been 
so  marked  with  her.  Her  bubble  of  social  pleasure  was  pricked. 
She  did  everything  she  had  to  do,  and  did  it  admirably.  But 
all  through  she  was  to  his  fancy  absent  and  distraite,  pursuing 
through  the  tumult  of  which  she  was  often  the  central  figure 
some  inner  meditations  of  which  neither  he  nor  any  one  else 
knew  anything.  Some  eclipse  had  passed  over  the  girl's  light 
self-satisfied  temper ;  some  searching  thrill  of  experience  had 
gone  through  the  whole  nature.  She  had  suffered,  and  she  was 
quietly  fighting  down  her  suffering  without  a  word  to  anybody. 

Flaxman's  guesses  as  to  what  had  happened  came  often  very 
near  the  truth,  and  the  mixture  of  indignation  and  relief  with 
which  he  received  his  own  conjectures  amused  himself. 

'  To  think,'  he  said  to  himself  once  with  a  long  breath,  '  that 
that  creature  was  never  at  a  public  school,  and  will  go  to  his 
death  without  any  one  of  the  tickings  due  to  him  ! ' 

Then  his  very  next  impulse,  perhaps,  would  be  an  impulse  of 
gratitude  towards  this  same  '  creature,'  towards  the  man  who 
had  released  a  prize  he  had  had  the  tardy  sense  to  see  was  not 
meant  for  him.  Free  again— to  be  loved,  to  be  won !  There 
was  the  fact  of  facts  after  all. 

His  own  future  policy,  however,  gave  him  much  anxious 
thought.  Clearly  at  present  the  one  thing  to  be  done  was  to 

2H 


466  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

keep  his  own  ambitions  carefully  out  of  sight.  He  had  the  skill 
to  see  that  she  was  in  a  state  of  reaction,  of  moral  and  mental 
fatigue.  What  she  mutely  seemed  to  ask  of  her  f riends  was  not 
to  be  made  to  feel. 

He  took  his  cue  accordingly.  He  talked  to  his  sister.  He 
kept  Lady  Charlotte  in  order.  After  all  her  eager  expectation 
on  Hugh's  behalf,  Lady  Helen  had  been  dumfoundered  by  the 
sudden  emergence  of  Langham  at  Lady  Charlotte's  party  for 
their  common  discomfiture.  Who  was  the  man? — why,  what 
did  it  all  mean  ?  Hugh  had  the  most  provoking  way  of  giving 
you  half  his  confidence.  To  tell  you  he  was  seriously  in  love, 
and  to  omit  to  add  the  trifling  item  that  the  girl  in  question 
Avas  probably  on  the  point  of  engaging  herself  to  somebody  else  ! 
Lady  Helen  made  believe  to  be  angry,  and  it  was  not  till  she 
had  reduced  Hugh  to  a  whimsical  penitence  and  a  full  confession 
of  all  he  knew  or  suspected,  that  she  consented,  with  as  much 
loftiness  as  the  physique  of  an  elf  allowed  her,  to  be  his  good 
friend  again,  and  to  play  those  cards  for  him  which  at  the 
moment  he  could  not  play  for  himself. 

So  in  the  cheeriest  daintiest  way  Rose  was  made  much  of 
by  both  brother  and  sister.  Lady  Helen  chatted  of  gowns  arid 
music  and  people,  whisked  Rose  and  Agnes  off  to  this  party  and 
that,  brought  fruit  and  flowers  to  Mrs.  Leyburn,  made  pretty 
deferential  love  to  Catherine,  and  generally,  to  Mrs.  Pierson's 
disgust,  became  the  girls'  chief  chaperon  in  a  fast-filling  London. 
Meanwhile,  Mr.  Flaxman  was  always  there  to  befriend  or  amuse 
his  sister's  protegees — always  there,  but  never  in  the  way.  He 
was  bantering,  sympathetic,  critical,  laudatory,  what  you  will ; 
but  all  the  time  he  preserved  a  delicate  distance  between  him- 
self and  Rose,  a  bright  nonchalance  and  impersonality  of  tone 
towards  her  which  made  his  companionship  a  perpetual  tonic. 
And,  between  them,  he  and  Helen  coerced  Lady  Charlotte.  A 
few  inconvenient  inquiries  after  Rose's  health,  a  few  unex- 
plained stares  and  '  humphs '  and  grunts,  a  few  irrelevant  dis- 
quisitions on  her  nephew's  merits  of  head  and  heart,  were  all  she 
was  able  to  allow  herself.  And  yet  she  was  inwardly  seething 
with  a  mass  of  sentiments,  to  which  it  would  have  been  pleasant 
to  give  expression — anger  with  Rose  for  having  been  so  blind 
and  so  presumptuous  as  to  prefer  some  one  else  to  Hugh  ;  anger 
with  Hugh  for  his  persistent  disregard  of  her  advice  and  the 
duke's  feelings ;  and  a  burning  desire  to  know  the  precise  why 
and  wherefore  of  Langham's  disappearance.  She  was  too  lofty 
to  become  Rose's  aunt  without  a  struggle,  but  she  was  not  too 
lofty  to  feel  the  hungriest  interest  in  her  love  affairs. 

But,  as  we  have  said,  the  person  who  for  the  time  profited 
most  by  Rose's  shaken  mood  was  Catherine.  The  girl  coming 
over,  restless  under  her  own  smart,  would  fall  to  watching  the 
trial  of  the  woman  and  the  wife,  and  would  often  perforce  forget 
herself  and  her  smaller  woes  in  the  pity  of  it.  She  stayed  iu 


CHAP,  xxxvii  NEW  OPENINGS  467 

Bedford  Square  once  for  a  week,  and  then  for  the  first  time  she 
realised  the  profound  change  which  had  passed  over  the  Els- 
meres1  life.  As  much  tenderness  between  husband  and  wife  as 
ever — perhaps  more  expression  of  it  even  than  before,  as  though 
from  an  instinctive  craving  to  hide  the  separateness  below  from 
each  other  and  from  the  world.  But  Robert  went  his  way, 
Catherine  hers.  Their  spheres  of  work  lay  far  apart ;  their 
interests  were  diverging  fast ;  and  though  Robert  at  any  rate 
was  perpetually  resisting,  all  sorts  of  fresh  invading  silences 
were  always  coming  in  to  limit  talk,  and  increase  the  number 
of  sore  points  which  each  avoided.  Robert  was  hard  at  work  in 
the  East  End  under  Murray  Edwardes's  auspices.  He  was 
already  known  to  certain  circles  as  a  seceder  from  the  Church 
who  was  likely  to  become  both  powerful  and  popular.  Two 
articles  of  his  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  on  disputed  points  of 
Biblical  criticism,  had  distinctly  made  their  mark,  and  several 
of  the  veterans  of  philosophical  debate  had  already  taken 
friendly  and  flattering  notice  of  the  new  writer.  Meanwhile 
Catherine  was  teaching  in  Mr.  Clarendon's  Sunday  school,  and 
attending  his  prayer-meetings.  The  more  expansive  Robert's 
energies  became,  the  more  she  suffered,  and  the  more  the  small 
daily  opportunities  for  friction  multiplied.  Soon  she  could 
hardly  bear  to  hear  him  talk  about  his  work,  and  she  never 
opened  the  number  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  which  con- 
tained his  papers.  Nor  had  he  the  heart  to  ask  her  to  read 
them. 

Murray  Edwardes  had  received  Elsmere,  on  his  first  appear- 
ance in  R ,  with  a  cordiality  and  a  helpfulness  of  the  most 

self-effacing  kind.  Robert  had  begun  with  assuring  his  new 
friend  that  he  saw  no  chance,  at  any  rate  for  the  present,  of  his 
formally  joining  the  Unitarians. 

'  I  have  not  the  heart  to  pledge  myself  again  just  yet !  And 
I  own  I  look  rather  for  a  combination  from  many  sides  than 
for  the  development  of  any  now  existing  sect.  But  supposing,' 
he  added,  smiling,  '  supposing  I  do  in  time  set  up  a  congregation 
and  a  service  of  my  own,  is  there  really  room  for  you  and  me  ? 
Should  I  not  be  infringing  on  a  work  I  respect  a  great  deal  too 
much  for  anything  of  the  sort  ? ' 

Edwardes  laughed  the  notion  to  scorn. 

The  parish,  as  a  whole,  contained  20,000  persons.  The  exist- 
ing churches,  which,  with  the  exception  of  St.  Wilfrid's,  were 
miserably  attended,  provided  accommodation  at  the  outside  for 
3000.  His  own  chapel  held  400,  and  was  about  half  full. 

'You  and  I  may  drop  our  lives  here,'  he  said,  his  pleasant 
friendliness  darkened  for  a  moment  by  the  look  of  melancholy 
which  London  work  seems  to  develop  even  in  the  most  buoyant 
of  men,  '  and  only  a  few  hundred  persons,  at  the  most,  be  ever 
the  wiser.  Begin  with  us — then  make  your  own  circle.' 

And  he  forthwith  carried  off  his  visitor  to  the  point  from 
which,  as  it  seemed  to  him,  Elsmere's  work  might  start,  viz.  a 


468  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

lecture-room  half  a  mile  from  his  own  chapel,  where  two  helpers 
of  his  had  just  established  an  independent  venture. 

Murray  Edwardes  had  at  the  time  an  interesting  and  miscel- 
laneous staff  of  lay-curates.  He  asked  no  questions  as  to  reli- 
gious opinions,  but  in  general  the  men  who  volunteered  under 
him — civil  servants,  a  young  doctor,  a  briefless  barrister  or  two — 
were  men  who  had  drifted  from  received  beliefs,  and  found  a  plea- 
sure and  freedom  in  working  for  and  with  him  they  could  hardly 
have  found  elsewhere.  The  two  who  had  planted  their  outpost 
in  what  seemed  to  them  a  particularly  promising  corner  of  the 
district  were  men  of  whom  Edwardes  knew  personally  little.  '  I 
have  really  not  much  concern  with  what  they  do,'  he  explained 
to  Elsmere,  '  except  that  they  get  a  small  share  of  our  funds. 
But  I  know  they  want  help,  and  if  they  will  take  you  in,  I  think 
you  will  make  something  of  it.' 

After  a  tramp  through  the  muddy  winter  streets,  they  came 
upon  a  new  block  of  warehouses,  in  the  lower  windows  of  which 
some  bills  announced  a  night-school  for  boys  and  men.  Here, 
to  judge  from  the  commotion  round  the  doors,  a  lively  scene  was 
going  on.  Outside,  a  gang  of  young  roughs  were  hammering  at 
the  doors,  and  shrieking  witticisms  through  the  keyhole.  Inside, 
as  soon  as  Murray  Edwardes  and  Elsmere,  by  dint  of  good 
humour  and  strong  shoulders,  had  succeeded  in  shoving  their 
way  through  and  shutting  the  door  behind  them,  they  found  a 
still  more  animated  performance  in  progress.  The  schoolroom 
was  in  almost  total  darkness  ;  the  pupils,  some  twenty  in 
number,  were  racing  about,  like  so  many  shadowy  demons,  pelt- 
ing each  other  and  their  teachers  with  the  '  dips '  which,  as  the 
buildings  were  new,  and  not  yet  fitted  for  gas,  had  been  pro- 
vided to  light  them  through  their  three  R's.  In  the  middle  stood 
the  two  philanthropists  they  were  in  search  of,  freely  bedaubed 
with  tallow,  one  employed  in  boxing  a  boy's  ears,  the  other  in 
saving  a  huge  inkbottle  whereon  some  enterprising  spirit  had 
rust  laid  hands  by  way  of  varying  the  rebel  ammunition.  Murray 
Edwardes,  who  was  in  his  element,  went  to  the  rescue  at  once, 
helped  by  Robert.  The  boy-minister,  as  he  looked,  had  been,  in 
fact,  '  bow '  of  the  Cambridge  eight,  and  possessed  muscles  which 
men  twice  his  size  might  have  envied.  In  three  minutes  he  had 
put  a  couple  of  ringleaders  into  the  street  by  the  scruff  of  the 
neck,  relit  a  lamp  which  had  been  turned  out,  and  got  the  rest 
of  the  rioters  in  hand.  Elsmere  backed  him  ably,  and  in  a  very 
short  time  they  had  cleared  the  premises. 

Then  the  four  looked  at  each  other,  and  Edwardes  went  off 
into  a  shout  of  laughter. 

'  My  dear  Wardlaw,  my  condolences  to  your  coat !  But  I 
don't  believe  if  I  were  a  rough  myself  I  could  resist  "dips." 
Let  me  introduce  a  friend — Mr.  Elsmere — and  if  you  will  have 
him,  a  recruit  for  your  work.  It  seems  to  me  another  pair  of 
arms  will  hardly  come  amiss  to  you  ! ' 

The  short  red-haired  man  addressed  shook  hands  with  Elsmere, 


CHAP,  xxxvin  NEW  OPENINGS  469 

scrutinising  him  from  under  bushy  eyebrows.  He  was  panting 
and  beplastered  with  tallow,  but  the  inner  man  was  evidently 
quite  unruffled,  and  Elsmere  liked  the  shrewd  Scotch  face  and 
gray  eyes. 

1  It  isn't  only  a  pair  of  arms  we  want,'  he  remarked  drily,  'but  a 
bit  of  science  behind  them.  Mr.  Elsmere,  I  observed,  can  use  his.' 

Then  he  turned  to  a  tall  affected-looking  youth  with  a  large 
nose  and  long  fair  hair,  who  stood  gasping  with  his  hands  upon 
his  sides,  his  eyes,  full  of  a  moody  wrath,  fixed  on  the  wreck 
and  disarray  of  the  schoolroom. 

'  Well,  Mackay,  have  they  knocked  the  wind  out  of  you  ?  My 
friend  and  helper — Mr.  Elsmere.  Come  and  sit  down,  wont 
you,  a  minute.  They've  left  us  the  chairs,  I  perceive,  and  there's 
a  spark  or  two  of  fire.  Do  you  smoke  ?  Will  you  light  up  ? ' 

The  four  men  sat  on  chatting  some  time,  and  then  Wardlaw 
and  Elsmere  walked  home  together.  It  had  been  all  arranged. 
Mackay,  a  curious  morbid  fellow,  who  had  thrown  himself  into 
Unitarianism  and  charity  mainly  out  of  opposition  to  an  or- 
thodox and  bourgeois  family,  and  who  had  a  great  idea  of  his  own 
social  powers,  was  somewhat  grudging  and  ungracious  through 
it  all.  But  Elsmere's  proposals  were  much  too  good  to  be  re- 
fused. He  offered  to  bring  to  the  undertaking  his  time,  his 
clergyman's  experience,  and  as  much  money  as  might  be  wanted. 
Wardlaw  listened  to  him  cautiously  for  an  hour,  took  stock  of 
the  whole  man  physically  and  morally,  and  finally  said,  as  he 
very  quietly  and  deliberately  knocked  the  ashes  out  of  his 
pipe,— 

'  All  right,  I'm  your  man,  Mr.  Elsmere.  If  Mackay  agrees,  I 
vote  we  make  you  captain  of  this  venture.' 

'Nothing  of  the  sort,'  said  Elsmere.  'In  London  I  am  a 
novice ;  I  come  to  learn,  not  to  lead.' 

Wardlaw  shook  his  head  with  a  little  shrewd  smile.  Mackay 
faintly  endorsed  his  companion's  offer,  and  the  party  broke  up. 

That  was  in  January.  In  two  months  from  that  time,  by  the 
natural  force  of  things,  Elsmere,  in  spite  of  diffidence  and  his  own 
most  sincere  wish  to  avoid  a  premature  leadership,  had  become 
the  head  and  heart  of  the  Elgood  Street  undertaking,  which  had 
already  assumed  much  larger  proportions.  Wardlaw  was  giving 
him  silent  approval  and  invaluable  help,  while  young  Mackay 
was  in  the  first  uncomfortable  stages  of  a  hero-worship  which 
promised  to  be  exceedingly  good  for  him. 


CHAPTER  XXXVin 

THERE  were  one  or  two  curious  points  connected  with  the  be- 
ginnings of  Elsmere's  venture  in  North  R ,  one  of  which 

may  just   be    noticed   here.      Wardlaw,   his    predecessor  and 
colleague,  had  speculatively  little  or  nothing  in  common  with 


470  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

Elsrnere  or  Murray  Edwardes.  He  was  a  devoted  and  ortho- 
dox Comtist,  for  whom  Edwardes  had  provided  an  outlet  for 
the  philanthropic  passion,  as  he  had  for  many  others  belonging 
to  far  stranger  and  remoter  faiths. 

By  profession  he  was  a  barrister,  with  a  small  and  struggling 
practice.  On  this  practice,  however,  he  had  married,  and  his 
wife,  who  had  been  a  doctor's  daughter  and  a  national  school- 
mistress, had  the  same  ardours  as  himself.  They  lived  in  one  of 
the  dismal  little  squares  near  the  Goswell  Road,  and  had  two 
children.  The  wife,  as  a  Positivist  mother  is  bound  to  do, 
tended  and  taught  her  children  entirely  herself.  She  might 
have  been  seen  any  day  wheeling  their  perambulator  through 
the  dreary  streets  of  a  dreary  region ;  she  was  their  Providence, 
their  deity,  the  representative  to  them  of  all  tenderness  and  all 
authority.  But  when  her  work  with  them  was  done,  she  would 
throw  herself  into  charity  organisation  cases,  into  efforts  for 
the  protection  of  workhouse  servants,  into  the  homeliest  acts 
of  ministry  towards  the  sick,  till  her  dowdy  little  figure  and 
her  face,  which  but  for  the  stress  of  London,  of  labour,  and  of 
poverty,  would  have  had  a  blunt  fresh-coloured  dairymaid's 
charm,  became  symbols  of  a  divine  and  sacred  helpfulness  in  the 
eyes  of  hundreds  of  straining  men  and  women. 

The  husband  also,  after  a  day  spent  in  chambers,  would  give 
his  evenings  to  teaching  or  committee  work.  They  never- 
allowed  themselves  to  breathe  even  to  each  other  that  life 
might  have  brighter  things  to  show  them  than  the  neighbour- 
hood  of  the  Goswell  Road.  There  was  a  certain  narrowness  in 
their  devotion  ;  they  had  their  bitternesses  and  ignorances  like 
other  people  ;  but  the  more  Robert  knew  of  them  the  more  pro- 
found became  his  admiration  for  that  potent  spirit  of  social 
help  which  in  our  generation  Comtism  has  done  so  much  to 
develop,  even  among  those  of  us  who  are  but  moderately  influ- 
enced by  Comte's  philosophy,  and  can  make  nothing  of  the 
religion  of  Humanity. 

Wardlaw  has  no  large  part  in  the  story  of  Elsmere's  work  in 

North  R .  In  spite  of  Robert's  efforts,  and  against  his  will, 

the  man  of  meaner  gifts  and  commoner  clay  was  eclipsed  by 
that  brilliant  and  persuasive  something  in  Elsmere  which  a 
kind  genius  had  infused  into  him  at  birth.  And  we  shall  see 
that  in  time  Robert's  energies  took  a  direction  which  Wardlaw 
could  not  follow  with  any  heartiness.  But  at  the  beginning 
Elsmere  owed  him  much,  and  it  was  a  debt  he  was  never  tired 
of  honouring. 

In  the  first  place,  Wardlaw's  choice  of  the  Elgood  Street  room 
as  a  fresh  centre  for  civilising  effort  had  been  extremely  shrewd. 
The  district  lying  about  it,  as  Robert  soon  came  to  know,  con- 
tained a  number  of  promising  elements. 

Close  by  the  dingy  street  which  sheltered  their  schoolroom 
rose  the  great  pile  of  a  new  factory  of  artistic  pottery,  a  rival 
on  the  north  side  of  the  river  to  Doulton's  immense  works  on 


CHAP,  xxxvni  NEW  OPENINGS  471 

the  south.  The  old  winding  streets  near  it,  and  the  blocks  of 
workmen's  dwellings  recently  erected  under  its  shadow,  were 
largely  occupied  by  the  workers  in  its  innumerable  floors,  and 
among  these  workers  was  a  large  proportion  of  skilled  artisans, 
men  often  of  a  considerable  amount  of  cultivation,  earning  high 
wages,  and  maintaining  a  high  standard  of  comfort.  A  great 
many  of  them,  trained  in  the  art  school  which  Murray  Edwardes 
had  been  largely  instrumental  in  establishing  within  easy 
distance  of  their  houses,  were  men  of  genuine  artistic  gifts  and 
accomplishment,  and  as  the  development  of  one  faculty  tends 
on  the  whole  to  set  others  working,  when  Robert,  after  a  few 
weeks'  work  in  the  place,  set  up  a  popular  historical  lecture 
once  a  fortnight,  announcing  the  fact  by  a  blue  and  white 
poster  in  the  schoolroom  windows,  it  was  the  potters  who  pro- 
vided him  with  his  first  hearers. 

The  rest  of  the  parish  was  divided  between  a  population  of 
dock  labourers,  settled  there  to  supply  the  needs  01  the  great 
dock  which  ran  up  into  the  south-eastern  corner  of  it,  two  or 
three  huge  breweries,  and  a  colony  of  watchmakers,  an  offshoot 
of  Clerkenwell,  who  lived  together  in  two  or  three  streets,  and 
showed  the  same  peculiarities  of  race  and  specialised  training 
to  be  noticed  in  the  more  northerly  settlement  from  which  they 
had  been  thrown  off  like  a  swarm  from  a  hive.  Outside  these 
well-defined  trades  there  was,  of  course,  a  warehouse  population, 
and  a  mass  of  heterogeneous  cadging  and  catering  which  went 
on  chiefly  in  the  riverside  streets  at  the  other  side  of  the  parish 
from  Elgood  Street,  in  the  neighbourhood  of  St.  Wilfrid's. 

St.  Wilfrid's  at  this  moment  seemed  to  Robert  to  be  doing  a 
very  successful  work  among  the  lowest  strata  of  the  parish. 
From  them  at  one  end  of  the  scale,  and  from  the  innumerable 
clerks  and  superintendents  who  during  the  daytime  crowded 
the  vast  warehouses  of  which  the  district  was  full,  its  Lenten 
congregations,  now  in  full  activity,  were  chiefly  drawn. 

The  Protestant  opposition,  which  had  shown  itself  so  brutally 
and  persistently  in  old  days,  was  now,  so  far  as  outward  mani- 
festations went,  all  but  extinct.  The  cassocked  monk -like 
clergy  might  preach  and  '  process '  in  the  open  air  as  much  as 
they  pleased.  The  populace,  where  it  was  not  indifferent,  was 
friendly,  and  devoted  living  had  borne  its  natural  fruits. 

A  small  incident,  which  need  not  be  recorded,  recalled  to 
Elsmere's  mind — after  he  had  been  working  some  six  weeks  in 
the  district — the  forgotten  unwelcome  fact  that  St.  Wilfrid's 
was  the  very  church  where  Newcome,  first  as  senior  curate  and 
then  as  vicar,  had  spent  those  ten  wonderful  years  into  which 
Elsmere  at  MureweU  had  been  never  tired  of  inquiring.  The 
thought  of  Newcome  was  a  very  sore  thought.  Elsmere  had 
written  to  him  announcing  his  resignation  of  his  living  im- 
mediately after  his  interview  with  the  bishop.  The  letter  had 
remained  unanswered,  and  it  was  by  now  tolerably  clear  that 
the  silence  of  its  recipient  meant  a  withdrawal  from  all  friendly 


472  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

relations  with  the  writer.  Elsmere's  affectionate  sensitive 
nature  took  such  things  hardly,  especially  as  he  knew  that 
Newcome's  life  was  becoming  increasingly  difficult  and  embit- 
tered. And  it  gave  him  now  a  fresh  pang  to  imagine  how 
Newcome  would  receive  the  news  of  his  quondam  friend's  '  in- 
fidel propaganda/  established  on  the  very  ground  where  he  him- 
self had  all  but  died  for  those  beliefs  Elsmere  had  thrown  over. 
But  Robert  was  learning  a  certain  hardness  in  this  London 
life  which  was  not  without  its  uses  to  character.  Hitherto  he 
had  always  swum  with  the  stream,  cheered  by  the  support  of 
all  the  great  and  prevailing  English  traditions.  Here,  he  and 
his  few  friends  were  fighting  a  solitary  fight  apart  from  the 
organised  system  of  English  religion  and  English  philanthropy. 
All  the  elements  of  culture  and  religion  already  existing  in  the 
place  were  against  them.  The  clergy  of  St.  Wilfrid's  passed 
them  with  cold  averted  eyes  ;  the  old  and  faineant  rector  of  the 
parish  church  very  soon  let  it  be  known  what  he  thought  as 
to  the  taste  of  Elsmere's  intrusion  on  his  parish,  or  as  to  the 
eternal  chances  of  those  who  might  take  either  him  or  Edwardes 
as  guides  in  matters  religious.  His  enmity  did  Elgood  Street 
no  harm,  and  the  pretensions  of  the  Church,  in  this  Babel  of 
20,000  souls,  to  cover  the  whole  field,  bore  clearly  no  relation  at 
all  to  the  facts.  But  every  little  incident  in  this  new  struggle 
of  his  life  cost  Elsmere  more  perhaps  than  it  would  have  cost 
other  men.  No  part  of  it  came  easily  to  him.  Only  a  high 
Utopian  vision  drove  him  on  from  day  to  day,  bracing  him  to 
act  and  judge,  if  need  be,  alone  and  for  himself,  approved  only 
by  conscience  and  the  inward  voice. 

'  Tasks  in  hours  of  insight  willed 
Can  be  in  hours  of  gloom  fulfilled  ; ' 

and  it  was  that  moment  by  the  river  which  worked  in  him 
through  all  the  prosaic  and  perplexing  details  of  this  new 
attempt  to  carry  enthusiasm  into  life. 

It  was  soon  plain  to  him  that  in  this  teeming  section  of 
London  the  chance  of  the  religious  reformer  lay  entirely  among 
the  upper  working  class.  In  London,  at  any  rate,  all  that  is 
most  prosperous  and  intelligent  among  the  working  class  holds 
itself  aloof  —  broadly  speaking  —  from  all  existing  spiritual 
agencies,  whether  of  Church  or  Dissent. 

Upon  the  genuine  London  artisan  the  Church  has  practically 
no  hold  whatever  ;  and  Dissent  has  nothing  like  the  hold  which 
it  has  on  similar  material  in  the  great  towns  of  the  North. 
Towards  religion  in  general  the  prevailing  attitude  is  one  of 
indifference  tinged  with  hostility.  '  Eight  hundred  thousand 
people  in  South  London,  of  whom  the  enormous  propor- 
tion belong  to  the  working  class,  and  among  them,  Church 
and  Dissent  nowhere— Christianity  not  in  possession.'  Such  is 
the  estimate  of  an  Evangelical  of  our  day  ;  and  similar  laments 
come  from  all  parts  of  the  capital.  The  Londoner  is  on  the 


xxvin  NEW  OPENINGS  473 

whole  more  conceited,  more  prejudiced,  more  given  over  to 
crude  theorising,  than  his  North-country  brother,  the  mill-hand, 
whose  mere  position,  as  one  of  a  homogeneous  and  tolerably 
constant  body,  subjects  him  to  a  continuous  discipline  of  inter- 
course and  discussion.  Our  popular  religion,  broadly  speaking, 
means  nothing  to  him.  He  is  sharp  enough  to  see  through  its 
contradictions  and  absurdities  ;  he  has  no  dread  of  losing  what 
he  never  valued  ;  his  sense  of  antiquity,  of  history,  is  nu ;  and 
his  life  supplies  him  with  excitement  enough  without  the 
stimulants  of  '  other -worldliness.'  Religion  has  been  on  the 
whole  irrationally  presented  to  him,  and  the  result  on  his  part 
has  been  an  irrational  breach  with  the  whole  moral  and  religious 
order  of  ideas. 

But  the  race  is  quick-witted  and  imaginative.  The  Greek 
cities  which  welcomed  and  spread  Christianity  carried  within 
them  much  the  same  elements  as  are  supplied  by  certain  sections 
of  the  London  working  class — elements  of  restlessness,  of  sensi- 
bility, of  passion.  The  mere  intermingling  of  races,  which  a 
modern  capital  shares  with  those  old  towns  of  Asia  Minor, 
predisposes  the  mind  to  a  greater  openness  and  receptiveness, 
whether  for  good  or  evil. 

As  the  weeks  passed  on,  and  after  the  first  inevitable  despond- 
ency produced  by  strange  surroundings  and  an  unwonted  isola- 
tion had  begun  to  wear  off,  Robert  often  found  himself  filled 
with  a  strange  flame  and  ardour  of  hope  !  But  his  first  steps 
had  nothing  to  do  with  religion.  He  made  himself  quickly  felt 
in  the  night-school,  and  as  soon  as  he  possibly  could  he  hired 
a  large  room  at  the  back  of  their  existing  room,  on  the  same 
floor,  where,  on  the  recreation  evenings,  he  might  begin  the 
story-telling,  which  had  been  so  great  a  success  at  Murewell. 
The  story- telling  struck  the  neighbourhood  as  a  great  novelty. 
At  first  only  a  few  youths  straggled  in  from  the  front  room, 
where  dominoes  and  draughts  and  the  illustrated  papers  held 
seductive  sway.  The  next  night  the  number  was  increased, 
and  by  the  fourth  or  fifth  evening  the  room  was  so  well  filled 
both  by  boys  and  a  large  contingent  of  artisans,  that  it  seemed 
well  to  appoint  a  special  evening  in  the  week  for  story-telling, 
or  the  recreation  room  would  have  been  deserted. 

In  these  performances  Elsmere's  aim  had  always  been  twofold 
— the  rousing  of  moral  sympathy  and  the  awakening  of  the 
imaginative  power  pure  and  simple.  He  ranged  the  whole 
world  for  stories.  Sometimes  it  would  be  merely  some  feature 
of  London  life  itself — the  history  of  a  great  fire,  for  instance, 
and  its  hairbreadth  escapes ;  a  collision  in  the  river ;  a  string 
of  instances  as  true  and  homely  and  realistic  as  they  could  be 
made  of  the  way  in  which  the  poor  help  one  another.  Some- 
times it  would  be  stories  illustrating  the  dangers  and  difficulties 
of  particular  trades — a  colliery  explosion  and  the  daring  of  the 
rescuers  ;  incidents  from  the  life  of  the  great  Northern  iron- 
works, or  from  that  of  the  Lancashire  factories ;  or  stories  of 


474  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

English  country  life  and  its  humours,  given  sometimes  in  dialect 
— Devonshire,  or  Yorkshire,  or  Cumberland — for  which  he  had 
a  special  gift.  Or,  again,  he  would  take  the  sea  and  its  terrors 
— the  immortal  story  of  the  Birkenhead ;  the  deadly  plunge  of 
the  Captain;  the  records  of  the  lifeboats,  or  the  fascinating 
story  of  the  ships  of  science,  exploring  step  by  step,  through 
miles  of  water,  the  past,  the  inhabitants,  the  hills  and  valleys 
of  that  underworld,  that  vast  Atlantic  bed,  in  which  Mont 
Blanc  might  be  buried  without  showing  even  his  topmost 
snowfield  above  the  plain  of  waves.  Then  at  other  times  it 
would  be  the  simple  frolic  and  fancy  of  fiction — fairy  tale  and 
legend,  Greek  myth  or  Icelandic  saga,  episodes  from  Walter 
Scott,  from  Cooper,  from  Dumas ;  to  be  followed  perhaps  on 
the  next  evening  by  the  terse  and  vigorous  biography  of  some 
man  of  the  people — of  Stephenson  or  Cobden,  of  Thomas 
Cooper  or  John  Bright,  or  even  of  Thomas  Carlyle. 

One  evening,  some  weeks  after  it  had  begun,  Hugh  Flaxman, 
hearing  from  Rose  of  the  success  of  the  experiment,  went  down 
to  hear  his  new  acquaintance  tell  the  story  of  Monte  Cristo's 
escape  from  the  Chateau  d'lf .  He  started  an  hour  earlier  than 
was  necessary,  and  with  an  admirable  impartiality  he  spent 
that  hour  at  St.  Wilfrid's  hearing  vespers.  Flaxman  had  a 
passion  for  intellectual  or  social  novelty  :  and  this  passion  was 
beguiling  him  into  a  close  observation  of  Elsmere.  At  the  same 
time  he  was  crossed  and  complicated  by  all  sorts  of  fastidious 
conservative  fibres,  and  when  his  friends  talked  rationalism,  it 
often  gave  him  a  vehement  pleasure  to  maintain  that  a  good 
Catholic  or  Ritualist  service  was  worth  all  their  arguments,  and 
would  outlast  them.  His  taste  drew  him  to  the  Church,  so  did 
a  love  of  opposition  to  current '  isms.'  Bishops  counted  on  him 
for  subscriptions,  and  High  Church  divines  sent  him  their 
pamphlets.  He  never  refused  the  subscriptions,  but  it  should 
be  added  that  with  equal  regularity  he  dropped  the  pamphlets 
into  his  waste-paper  basket.  Altogether  a  not  very  decipherable 
person  in  religious  matters — as  Rose  had  already  discovered. 

The  change  from  the  dim  and  perfumed  spaces  of  St.  Wilfrid's 
to  the  bare  warehouse  room  with  its  packed  rows  of  listeners 
was  striking  enough.  Here  were  no  bowed  figures,  no  recueille- 
ment.  In  the  blaze  of  crude  light  every  eager  eye  was  fixed 
upon  the  slight  elastic  figure  on  the  platform,  each  change  in 
the  expressive  face,  each  gesture  of  the  long  arms  and  thin 
flexible  hands,  finding  its  response  in  the  laughter,  the  attentive 
silence,  the  frowning  suspense  of  the  audience.  At  one  point  a 
band  of  young  roughs  at  the  back  made  a  disturbance,  but  their 
neighbours  had  the  offenders  quelled  and  out  in  a  twinkling, 
and  the  room  cried  out  for  a  repetition  of  the  sentences  which 
had  been  lost  in  the  noise.  When  Dantes,  opening  his  knife 
with  his  teeth,  managed  to  cut  the  strings  of  the  sack,  a  gasp  of 
relief  ran  through  the  crowd ;  when  at  last  he  reached  terra 
firma  there  was  a  ringing  cheer. 


CHAP,  xxxviu  NEW  OPENINGS  475 

'  What  is  he,  d'ye  know  ? '  Flaxman  heard  a  mechanic  ask  his 
neighbour,  as  .Robert  paused  for  a  moment  to  get  breath,  the 
man  jerking  a  grimy  thumb  in  the  story -teller's  direction 
meanwhile.  'Seems  Mke  a  parson  somehow.  But  he  ain't  a 
parson. 

'Not  he,'  said  the  other  laconically.  'Knows  better.  Most 
of  'em  as  comes  down  'ere  stuffs  all  they  have  to  say  as  full  of 
goody-goody  as  an  egg's  full  of  meat.  If  he  wur  that  sort  you 
wouldn't  catch  me  here.  Never  heard  him  say  anything  in  the 
"  dear  brethren "  sort  of  style,  and  I've  been  ere  most  o'  these 
evenings  and  to  his  lectures  besides.' 

'Perhaps  he's  one  of  your  d — d  sly  ones,'  said  the  first 
speaker  dubiously.  '  Means  to  shovel  it  in  by  and  by.' 

'  Well,  I  don't  know  as  I  couldn't  stand  it  if  he  did,'  returned 
his  companion.  '  He'd  let  other  fellers  have  their  say,  anyhow.' 

Flaxman  looked  curiously  at  the  speaker.  He  was  a  young 
man,  a  gasfitter — to  judge  by  the  contents  of  the  basket  he 
seemed  to  have  brought  in  with  him  on  his  way  from  work — 
with  eyes  like  live  birds',  and  small  emaciated  features.  During 
the  story  Flaxman  had  noticed  the  man's  thin  begrimed  hand, 
as  it  rested  on  the  bench  in  front  of  him,  trembling  with 
excitement. 

Another  project  of  Robert's,  started  as  soon  as  he  had  felt 
his  way  a  little  in  the  district,  was  the  scientific  Sunday  school. 
This  was  the  direct  result  of  a  paragraph  in  Huxley's  Lay 
Sermons,  where  the  hint  of  such  a  school  was  first  thrown  out. 
However,  since  the  introduction  of  science  teaching  into  the 
Board  schools,  the  novelty  and  necessity  of  such  a  supplement 
to  a  child's  ordinary  education  is  not  what  it  was.  Robert  set 
it  up  mainly  for  the  sake  of  drawing  the  boys  out  of  the  streets 
in  the  afternoons,  and  providing  them  with  some  other  food  for 
fancy  and  delight  than  larking  and  smoking  and  penny  dread- 
fuls. A  little  simple  chemical  and  electrical  experiment  went 
down  greatly ;  so  did  a  botany  class,  to  which  Elsmere  would 
come  armed  with  two  stores  of  flowers,  one  to  be  picked  to 
pieces,  the  other  to  be  distributed  according  to  memory  and 
attention.  A  year  before  he  had  had  a  number  of  large  coloured 
plates  of  tropical  fruit  and  flowers  prepared  for  him  by  a  Kew 
assistant.  These  he  would  often  set  up  on  a  large  screen,  or 
put  up  on  the  walls,  till  the  dingy  schoolroom  became  a  bower 
of  superb  blossom  and  luxuriant  leaf,  a  glow  of  red  and  purple 
and  orange.  And  then — still  by  the  help  of  pictures — he  would 
take  his  class  on  a  tour  through  strange  lands,  talking  to  them 
of  China  or  Egypt  or  South  America,  till  they  followed  him  up 
the  Amazon,  or  into  the  pyramids  or  through  the  Pampas,  or 
into  the  mysterious  buried  cities  of  Mexico,  as  the  children  of 
Hamelin  followed  the  magic  of  the  Pied  Piper. 

Hardly  any  of  those  who  came  to  him,  adults  or  children, 
while  almost  all  of  the  artisan  class,  were  of  the  poorest  class.  He 
knew  it,  and  had  laid  his  plans  for  such  a  result.  Such  work  as 


476  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  VI 

he  had  at  heart  has  no  chance  with  the  lowest  in  the  social 
scale,  in  its  beginnings.  It  must  have  something  to  work  upon, 
and  must  penetrate  downwards.  He  only  can  receive  who 
already  hath — there  is  no  profounder  axiom. 

And  meanwhile  the  months  passed  on,  and  he  was  still  brood- 
ing, still  waiting.  At  last  the  spark  fell. 

There,  in  the  next  street  but  one  to  Elgood  Street,  rose  the 

famous  Workmen's  Club  of  North  R .     It  had  been  started 

by  a  former  Liberal  clergyman  of  the  parish,  whose  main 
object,  however,  had  been  to  train  the  workmen  to  manage  it 
for  themselves.  His  training  had  been,  in  fact,  too  successful. 
Not  only  was  it  now  wholly  managed  by  artisans,  but  it  had 
come  to  be  a  centre  of  active,  nay,  bmtal,  opposition  to  the 
Church  and  faith  which  had  originally  fostered  it.  In  organic 
connection  with  it  was  a  large  debating  hall,  in  which  the  most 
notorious  secularist  lecturers  held  forth  every  Sunday  evening ; 
and  next  door  to  it,  under  its  shadow  and  patronage,  was  a 
little  dingy  shop  filled  to  overflowing  with  the  coarsest  free- 
thinking  publications,  Colonel  Ingersoll's  books  occupying  the 
§lace  of  honour  in  the  window  and  the  Freethinker  placard 
aunting  at  the  door.  Inside  there  was  still  more  highly 
seasoned  literature  even  than  the  Freethinker  to  be  had.  There 
was  in  particular  a  small  halfpenny  paper  which  was  under- 
stood to  be  in  some  sense  the  special  organ  of  the  North  R — 
Club  ;  which  was  at  any  rate  published  close  by,  and  edited  by 
one  of  the  workmen  founders  of  the  club.  This  unsavoury 
sheet  began  to  be  more  and  more  defiantly  advertised  through 
the  parish  as  Lent  drew  on  towards  Passion  week,  and  the 
exertions  of  St.  Wilfrid's  and  of  the  other  churches,  which  were 
being  spurred  on  by  the  Ritualists'  success,  became  more  ap- 
parent. Soon  it  seemed  to  Robert  that  every  bit  of  hoarding 
and  every  waste  wall  was  filled  with  the  announcement : — 

'  Read  Faith  and  Fools.  Enormous  success.  Our  Comic  Life 
of  Christ  now  nearly  completed.  Quite  the  best  thing  of  its 
kind  going.  Woodcut  this  week — Transfiguration.' 

His  heart  grew  fierce  within  him.  One  night  in  Passion 
week  he  left  the  night-school  about  ten  o'clock.  His  way  led 
him  past  the  club,  which  was  brilliantly  lit  up,  and  evidently 
in  full  activity.  Round  the  door  there  was  a  knot  of  workmen 
lounging.  It  was  a  mild  moonlit  April  night,  and  the  air  was 
pleasant.  Several  of  them  had  copies  of  Faith  and  Fools,  and 
were  showing  the  week's  woodcut  to  those  about  them,  with 
chuckles  and  spirts  of  laughter. 

Robert  caught  a  few  words  as  he  hurried  past  them,  and 
stirred  by  a  sudden  impulse  turned  into  the  shop  beyond,  and 
asked  for  the  paper.  The  woman  handed  it  to  him,  and  gave 
him  his  change  with  a  business-like  sangfroid,  which  struck  on 
his  tired  nerves  almost  more  painfully  than  the  laughing 
brutality  of  the  men  he  had  just  passed. 

Directly  he  found  himself  in  another  street  he  opened  the 


CHAP,  xxxvin  NEW  OPENINGS  477 

paper  under  a  lamp-post.  It  contained  a  caricature  of  the 
Crucifixion,  the  scroll  emanating  from  Mary  Magdalene's  mouth, 
in  particular,  containing  obscenities  which  cannot  be  quoted 
here. 

llobert  thrust  it  into  his  pocket  and  strode  on,  every  nerve 
quivering. 

'This  is  Wednesday  in  Passion  week/  he  said  to  himself. 
'  The  day  after  to-morrow  is  Good  Friday  ! ' 

He  walked  fast  in  a  north-westerly  direction,  and  soon  found 
himself  within  the  City,  where  the  streets  were  long  since  empty 
and  silent.  But  he  noticed  nothing  around  him.  His  thoughts 
were  in  the  distant  East,  among  the  flat  roofs  and  white  walls 
of  Nazareth,  the  olives  of  Bethany,  the  steep  streets  and  rocky 
ramparts  of  Jerusalem.  He  had  seen  them  with  the  bodily  eye, 
and  the  fact  had  enormously  quickened  his  historical  perception. 
The  child  of  Nazareth,  the  moralist  and  teacher  of  Capernaum 
and  Gennesaret,  the  strenuous  seer  and  martyr  of  the  later 
Jerusalem  preaching — all  these  various  images  sprang  into 
throbbing  poetic  life  within  him.  That  anything  in  human 
shape  should  be  found  capable  of  dragging  this  life  and  this 
death  through  the  mire  of  a  hideous  and  befouling  laughter ! 
Who  was  responsible  ?  To  what  cause  could  one  trace  such  a 
temper  of  mind  towards  such  an  object — present  and  militant 
as  that  temper  is  in  all  the  crowded  centres  of  working  life 
throughout  modern  Europe?  The  toiler  of  the  world  as  he 
matures  may  be  made  to  love  Socrates  or  Buddha  or  Marcus 
Aurelius.  It  would  seem  often  as  though  he  could  not  be  made 
to  love  Jesus  !  Is  it  the  Nemesis  that  ultimately  discovers  and 
avenges  the  sublimest,  the  least  conscious  departure  from 
simplicity  and  verity? — is  it  the  last  and  most  terrible  illus- 
tration of  a  great  axiom  :  '  Faith  has  a  judge — in  truth'  ? 

He  went  home  and  lay  awake  half  the  night  pondering.  If 
he  could  but  pour  out  liis  heart !  But  though  Catherine,  the 
wife  of  his  heart,  of  his  youth,  is  there,  close  beside  him,  doubt 
and  struggle  and  perplexity  are  alike  frozen  on  his  lips.  He 
cannot  speak  without  sympathy,  and  she  will  not  hear  except 
under  a  moral  compulsion  which  he  shrinks  more  and  more  pain- 
fully from  exercising. 

The  next  night  was  a  story-telling  night.  He  spent  it  in 
telling  the  legend  of  St.  Francis.  When  it  was  over  he  asked 
the  audience  to  wait  a  moment,  and  there  and  then — with  the 
tender  imaginative  Franciscan  atmosphere,  as  it  were,  still 
about  them — he  delivered  a  short  and  vigorous  protest  in  the 
name  of  decency,  good  feeling,  and  common  sense,  against  the 
idiotic  profanities  with  which  the  whole  immediate  neighbour- 
hood seemed  to  be  reeking.  It  was  the  first  time  he  had 
approached  any  religious  matter  directly.  A  knot  of  work- 
men sitting  together  at  the  back  of  the  room  looked  at  each 
other  with  a  significant  grimace  or  two. 

When  Robert  ceased  speaking  one  of  them,  an  elderly  watch- 


478  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

maker,  got  up  and  made  a  dry  and  cynical  little  speech,  nothing 
moving  but  the  thin  lips  in  the  shrivelled  mahogany  face. 
Robert  knew  the  man  well.  He  was  a  Genevese  by  birth, 
Calvinist  by  blood,  revolutionist  by  development.  He  com- 
plained that  Mr.  Elsmere  had  taken  his  audience  by  surprise  ; 
that  a  good  many  of  those  present  understood  the  remarks  he 
had  just  made  as  an  attack  upon  an  institution  in  which  many 
of  them  were  deeply  interested ;  and  that  he  invited  Mr. 
Elsmere  to  a  more  thorough  discussion  of  the  matter,  in  a 
place  where  he  could  be  both  heard  and  answered. 

The  room  applauded  with  some  signs  of  suppressed  excite- 
ment. Most  of  the  men  there  were  accustomed  to  disputation 
of  the  sort  which  any  Sunday  visitor  to  Victoria  Park  may  hear 
going  on  there  week  after  week.  Elsmere  had  made  a  vivid 
impression ;  and  the  prospect  of  a  fight  with  him  had  an  un- 
usual piquancy. 

Robert  sprang  up.  '  When  you  will,'  he  said.  '  I  am  ready 
to  stand  by  what  I  have  just  said  in  the  face  of  you  all,  if  you 
care  to  hear  it.' 

Place  and  particulars  were  hastily  arranged,  subject  to  the 
approval  of  the  club  committee,  and  Elsmere's  audience  separ- 
ated in  a  glow  of  curiosity  and  expectation. 

'  Didn't  I  tell  ye  ? '  the  gasfitter  s  snarling  friend  said  to  him. 
'  Scratch  him  and  you  find  the  parson.  These  upper-class  folk, 
when  they  come  among  us  poor  ones,  always  seem  to  me  just 
hunting  for  souls,  as  those  Injuns  he  was  talking  about  last 
week  hunt  for  scalps.  They  can't  get  to  heaven  without  a 
certain  number  of  'em  slung  about  'em.' 

'  Wait  a  bit ! '  said  the  gasfitter,  his  quick  dark  eyes  betray- 
ing a  certain  raised  inner  temperature. 

Next  morning  the  North  R Club  was  placarded  with 

announcements  that  on  Easter  Eve  next  Robert  Elsmere,  Esq., 
would  deli ver  a  lecture  in  the  Debating  Hall  on  '  The  Claim  of 
Jesus  upon  Modern  Life ' ;  to  be  followed,  as  usual,  by  general 
discussion. 


CHAPTER  XXXIX 

IT  was  the  afternoon  of  Good  Friday.  Catherine  had  been  to 
church  at  St.  Paul's,  and  Robert,  though  not  without  some  in- 
ward struggle,  had  accompanied  her.  Their  midday  meal  was 
over,  and  Robert  had  been  devoting  himself  to  Mary,  who  had 
been  tottering  round  the  room  in  his  •vyake,  clutching  one  finger 
tight  with  her  chubby  hand.  In  particular,  he  had  been  coax- 
ing her  into  friendship  with  a  wooden  Japanese  dragon  which 
wound  itself  in  awful  yet  most  seductive  coils  round  the  cabinet 
at  the  end  of  the  room.  It  was  Mary's  weekly  task  to  embrace 
this  horror,  and  the  performance  went  by  the  name  of  '  kissing 


CHAP,  xxxix  NEW  OPENINGS  479 

the  Jabberwock.'  It  had  been  triumphantly  achieved,  and,  as 
the  reward  of  bravery,  Mary  was  being  carried  round  the  room 
on  her  father's  shoulder,  holding  on  mercilessly  to  his  curls,  her 
shining  blue  eyes  darting  scorn  at  the  defeated  monster. 

At  last  Robert  deposited  her  on  the  rug  beside  a  fascinating 
farmyard  which  lay  there  spread  out  for  her,  and  stood  looking, 
not  at  the  child,  but  at  his  wife. 

'  Catherine,  I  feel  so  much  as  Mary  did  three  minutes  ago ! ' 

She  looked  up  startled.  The  tone  was  light,  but  the  sadness, 
the  emotion  of  the  eyes,  contradicted  it. 

'I  want  courage,  he  went  on — 'courage  to  tell  you  some- 
thing that  may  hurt  you.  And  yet  I  ought  to  tell  it. 

Her  face  took  the  shrinking  expression  which  was  so  painful 
to  him.  But  she  waited  quietly  for  what  he  had  to  say. 

'  You  know,  I  think,'  he  said,  looking  away  from  her  to  the 
gray  Museum  outside,  '  that  my  work  in  R hasn't  been  reli- 
gious as  yet  at  all  Oh,  of  course,  I  have  said  things  here  and 
there,  but  I  haven't  delivered  myself  in  any  way.  Now  there 
has  come  an  opening.' 

And  he  described  to  her — while  she  shivered  a  little  and 
drew  herself  together — the  provocations  which  were  leading 
him  into  a  tussle  with  the  North  R Club. 

'  They  have  given  me  a  very  civil  invitation.  They  are  the 
sort  of  men  after  all  whom  it  pays  to  get  hold  of,  if  one  can. 
Among  their  fellows,  they  are  the  men  who  think.  One  longs 
to  help  them  to  think  to  a  little  more  purpose.' 

'What  have  you  to  give  them,  Robert?'  asked  Catherine 
after  a  pause,  her  eyes  bent  on  the  child's  stocking  she  was 
knitting.  Her  heart  was  full  enough  already,  poor  soul.  Oh, 
the  bitterness  of  this  Passion  week  !  He  had  been  at  her  side 
often  in  church2  but  through  all  his  tender  silence  and  consider- 
ation she  had  divined  the  constant  struggle  in  him  between  love 
and  intellectual  honesty,  and  it  had  filled  her  with  a  dumb 
irritation  and  misery  indescribable.  Do  what  she  would, 
wrestle  with  herself  as  she  would,  there  was  constantly 
emerging  in  her  now  a  note  of  anger,  not  with  Robert,  but, 
as  it  were,  with  those  malign  forces  oi  which  he  was  the 
prey. 

'What  have  I  to  give  them?'  he  repeated  sadly.  'Very 
little,  Catherine,  as  it  seems  to  me  to-night.  But  come  and 
see.' 

His  tone  had  a  melancholy  which  went  to  her  heart.  In 
reality  he  was  in  that  state  or  depression  which  often  precedes 
a  great  effort.  But  she  was  startled  by  his  suggestion. 

'Come  with  you,  Robert?  To  the  meeting  of  a  secularist 
club!' 

'Why  not?  I  shall  be  there  to  protest  against  outrage  to 
what  both  you  and  I  hold  dear.  And  the  men  are  decent 
fellows.  There  will  be  no  disturbance.' 

'  What  are  you  going  to  do  ? '  she  asked  in  a  low  voice. 


480  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

'  I  have  been  trying  to  think  it  out,'  he  said  with  difficulty. 
'  I  want  simply,  if  I  can,  to  transfer  to  their  minds  that  image 
of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  which  thought,  and  love,  and  reading 
have  left  upon  my  own.  I  want  to  make  them  realise  for  them- 
selves the  historical  character,  so  far  as  it  can  be  realised — to 
make  them  see  for  themselves  the  real  figure,  as  it  went  in 
and  out  amongst  men — so  far  as  our  eyes  can  now  discern  it.' 

The  words  came  quicker  towards  the  end,  while  the  voice 
sank — took  the  vibrating  characteristic  note  the  wife  knew  so 
well. 

'  How  can  that  help  them  ? '  she  said  abruptly.  '  Your  his- 
torical Christ,  Robert,  will  never  win  souls.  If  he  was  God, 
every  word  you  speak  will  insult  him.  If  he  was  man,  he  was 
not  a  good  man  ! ' 

'  Come  and  see,'  was  all  he  said,  holding  out  his  hand  to  her. 
It  was  in  some  sort  a  renewal  of  the  scene  at  Les  Avants,  the 
inevitable  renewal  of  an  offer  he  felt  bound  to  make,  and  she 
felt  bound  to  resist. 

She  let  her  knitting  fall  and  placed  her  hand  in  his.  The 
baby  on  the  rug  was  alternately  caressing  and  scourging  a 
woolly  baa-lamb,  which  was  the  fetish  of  her  childish  worship. 
Her  broken  incessant  baby -talk,  and  the  ringing  kisses  with 
which  she  atoned  to  the  baa-lamb  for  each  successive  outrage, 
made  a  running  accompaniment  to  the  moved  undertones  of  the 
parents. 

'  Don't  ask  me,  Robert,  don't  ask  me !  Do  you  want  me  to 
come  and  sit  thinking  of  last  year's  Easter  Eve  1 ' 

'  Heaven  knows  I  was  miserable  enough  last  Easter  Eve,'  he 
said  slowly. 

'And  now,'  she  exclaimed,  looking  at  him  with  a  sudden 
agitation  of  every  feature,  '  now  you  are  not  miserable  ?  You 
are  quite  confident  and  sure  ?  You  are  going  to  devote  your 
life  to  attacking  the  few  remnants  of  faith  that  still  remain  in 
the  world?' 

Never  in  her  married  life  had  she  spoken  to  him  with  this 
accent  of  bitterness  and  hostility.  He  started  and  withdrew 
his  hand,  and  there  was  a  silence. 

'I  held  once  a  wife  in  my  arms,'  he  said  presently  with  a 
voice  hardly  audible,  '  who  said  to  me  that  she  would  never  per- 
secute her  husband.  But  what  is  persecution  if  it  is  not  the 
determination  not  to  understand  1 ' 

She  buried  her  face  in  her  hands.  '  I  could  not  understand,' 
she  said  sombrely. 

'And  rather  than  try,'  he  insisted,  'you  will  go  on  believing 
that  I  am  a  man  without  faith,  seeking  only  to  destroy.' 

'  I  know  you  think  you  have  faith,  she  answered,  '  but  how 
can  it  seem  faith  to  me  ?  "  He  that  will  not  confess  Me  before 
men,  him  will  I  also  deny  before  My  Father  which  is  in  heaven." 
Your  unbelief  seems  to  me  more  dangerous  than  these  horrible 
things  which  shock  you.  For  you  can  make  it  attractive, 


CHAP,  xxxix  NEW  OPENINGS  481 

you  can  make  it  loved,  as  you  once  made  the  faith  of  Christ 
loved.' 

He  was  silent.  She  raised  her  face  presently,  whereon  were 
the  traces  of  some  of  those  quiet  difficult  tears  which  were 
characteristic  of  her,  and  went  softly  out  of  the  room. 

He  stood  a  while  leaning  against  the  mantelpiece,  deaf  to 
little  Mary's  clamour,  and  to  her  occasional  clutches  at  his 
knees,  as  she  tried  to  raise  herself  on  her  tiny  tottering  feet.  A 
sense  as  though  of  some  fresh  disaster  was  upon  him.  His  heart 
was  sinking,  sinking  within  him.  And  yet  none  knew  better 
than  he  that  there  was  nothing  fresh.  It  was  merely  that  the 
scene  had  recalled  to  him  anew  some  of  those  unpalatable  truths 
which  the  optimist  is  always  much  too  ready  to  forget. 

Heredity,  the  moulding  force  of  circumstance,  the  iron  hold 
of  the  past  upon  the  present — a  man  like  Elsmere  realises  the 
working  of  these  things  in  other  men's  lives  with  a  singular 
subtlety  and  clearness,  and  is  for  ever  overlooking  them,  running 
his  head  against  them,  in  his  own. 

He  turned  and  laid  his  arms  on  the  chimneypiece,  burying 
his  head  on  them.  Suddenly  he  felt  a  touch  on  his  knee,  and, 
looking  down,  saw  Mary  peering  up,  her  masses  of  dark  hair 
streaming  back  from  the  straining  little  face,  the  grave  open 
mouth,  and  alarmed  eyes. 
•  '  Fader,  tiss  !  fader,  tiss  ! '  she  said  imperatively. 

He  lifted  her  up  and  covered  the  little  brown  cheeks  with 
kisses.  But  the  touch  of  the  child  only  woke  in  him  a  fresh 
dread — the  like  of  something  he  had  often  divined  of  late  in 
Catherine.  Was  she  actually  afraid  now  that  he  might  feel 
himself  bound  in  future  to  take  her  child  spiritually  from  her  ? 
The  suspicion  of  such  a  fear  in  her  woke  in  him  a  fresh  anguish ; 
it  seemed  a  measure  of  the  distance  they  had  travelled  from 
that  old  perfect  unity. 

'She  thinks  I  could  even  become  in  time  her  tyrant  and 
torturer,'  he  said  to  himself  with  measureless  pain,  '  and  who 
knows  —  who  can  answer  for  himself  ?  Oh,  the  puzzle  of 
living ! ' 

When  she  came  back  into  the  room,  pale  and  quiet,  Catherine 
said  nothing,  and  Robert  went  to  his  letters.  But  after  a  while 
she  opened  his  study  door. 

'  Robert,  will  you  tell  me  what  your  stories  are  to  be  next 
week,  and  let  me  put  out  the  pictures  ? ' 

It  was  the  first  time  she  had  made  any  such  offer.  He  sprang 
up  with  a  flash  in  his  gray  eyes,  and  brought  her  a  slip  of  paper 
with  a  list.  She  took  it  without  looking  at  him.  But  he  caught 
her  in  his  arms,  and  for  a  moment  in  that  embrace  the  soreness 
of  both  hearts  passed  away. 

But  if  Catherine  would  not  go,  Elsmere  was  not  left  on  this 
critical  occasion  without  auditors  from  his  own  immediate  circle. 
On  the  evening  of  Good  Friday  Flaxman  had  found  his  way  to 

2l 


482  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

Bedford  Square,  and,  as  Catherine  was  out,  was  shown  into 
Elsmere's  study. 

'  I  have  come,'  he  announced,  '  to  try  and  persuade  you  and 
Mrs.  Elsmere  to  go  down  with  me  to  Greenlaws  to-morrow. 
My  Easter  party  has  come  to  grief,  and  it  would  be  a  real  charity 
on  your  part  to  come  and  resuscitate  it.  Do !  You  look 
abominably  fagged,  and  as  if  some  country  would  do  you  good.' 

'  But  I  thought— — '  began  Robert,  taken  aback. 

'You  thought,'  repeated  Flaxman  coolly,  'that  your  two 
sisters-in-law  were  going  down  there  with  Lady  Helen,  to  meet 
some  musical  folk.  Well,  they  are  not  coming.  Miss  Leyburn 
thinks  your  mother-in-law  not  very  well  to-day,  and  doesn't 
like  to  come.  And  your  younger  sister  prefers  also  to  stay  in 

town.  Helen  is  much  disappointed,  so  am  I.  But '  And 

he  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

Robert  found  it  difficult  to  make  a  suitable  remark.  His 
sisters-in-law  were  certainly  inscrutable  young  women.  This 
Easter  party  at  Greenlaws,  Mr.  Flaxman's  country  house,  had 
been  planned,  he  knew,  for  weeks.  And  certainly  nothing 
could  be  very  wrong  with  Mrs.  Leyburn,  or  Catherine  would 
have  been  warned. 

'  I  am  afraid  your  plans  must  be  greatly  put  out,'  he  said, 
with  some  embarrassment. 

'  Of  course  they  are,'  replied  Flaxman,  with  a  dry  smile.  He 
stood  opposite  Elsmere,  his  hands  in  his  pockets. 

'  Will  you  have  a  confidence  ? '  the  bright  eyes  seemed  to  say. 
'  I  am  quite  ready.  Claim  it  if  you  like.' 

But  Elsmere  had  no  intention  of  claiming  it.  The  position 
of  all  Rose's  kindred,  indeed,  at  the  present  moment  was  not 
easy.  None  of  them  had  the  least  knowledge  of  Rose's  mind. 
Had  she  forgotten  Langham  ?  Had  she  lost  her  heart  afresh  to 
Flaxman?  No  one  knew.  Flaxman's  absorption  in  her  was 
clear  enough.  But  his  love-making,  if  it  was  such,  was  not  of 
an  ordinary  kind,  and  did  not  always  explain  itself.  And, 
moreover,  his  wealth  and  social  position  were  elements  in  the 
situation  calculated  to  make  people  like  the  Elsmeres  particularly 
diffident  and  discreet.  Impossible  for  them,  much  as  they  liked 
him,  to  make  any  of  the  advances  ! 

No,  Robert  wanted  no  confidences.  He  was  not  prepared  to 
take  the  responsibility  of  them.  So,  letting  Rose  alone,  he  took 
up  his  visitor's  invitation  to  themselves,  and  explained  the 
engagement  for  Easter  Eve,  which  tied  them  to  London. 

'  Whew ! '  said  Hugh  Flaxman,  '  but  that  will  be  a  shindy 
worth  seeing.  I  must  come  ! ' 

'  Nonsense  ! '  said  Robert,  smiling.  '  Go  down  to  Greenlaws, 
and  go  to  church.  That  will  be  much  more  in  your  line.' 

'  As  for  church,'  said  Flaxman  meditatively,  '  if  I  put  off  my 
party  altogether,  and  stay  in  town,  there  will  be  this  further 
advantage,  that,  after  hearing  you  on  Saturday  night,  I  can, 
with  a  blameless  impartiality,  spend  the  following  day  in  St. 


CHAP,  xxxix  NEW  OPENINGS  483 

Andrew's,  Well  Street.  Yes  !  I  telegraph  to  Helen — she  knows 
my  ways — and  I  come  down  to  protect  you  against  an  atheistical 
mob  to-morrow  night ! ' 

Robert  tried  to  dissuade  him.  He  did  not  want  Flaxman. 
Flaxman's  Epicureanism,  the  easy  tolerance  with  which,  now 
that  the  effervescence  of  his  youth  had  subsided,  the  man 
harboured  and  dallied  with  a  dozen  contradictory  beliefs,  were 
at  times  peculiarly  antipathetic  to  Elsmere.  They  were  so  now, 
just  as  heart  and  soul  were  nerved  to  an  effort  which  could  not 
be  made  at  all  without  the  nobler  sort  of  self-confidence. 

But  Flaxman  was  determined. 

'  No/  he  said  ;  '  this  one  day  we'll  give — to  heresy.  Don't 
look  so  forbidding !  In  the  first  place,  you  won't  see  me ;  in 
the  next,  if  you  did,  you  would  feel  me  as  wax  in  your  hands. 
I  am  like  the  man  in  Sophocles — always  the  possession  of  the 
last  speaker !  One  day  I  am  all  for  the  church.  A  certain 
number  of  chances  in  the  hundred  there  still  are,  you  will  admit, 
that  she  is  in  the  right  of  it.  And  if  so,  why  should  I  cut  my- 
self off  from  a  whole  host  of  beautiful  things  not  to  be  got 
outside  her  ?  But  the  next  day — vive  Elsmere  and  the  Revolu- 
tion !  If  only  Elsmere  could  persuade  me  intellectually  !  But 
I  never  yet  came  across  a  religious  novelty  that  seemed  to  me 
to  have  a  leg  of  logic  to  stand  on  ! ' 

He  laid  his  hand  on  Robert's  shoulder,  his  eyes  twinkling 
with  a  sudden  energy.  Robert  made  no  answer.  He  stood 
erect,  frowning  a  little,  his  hands  thrust  far  into  the  pockets  of 
his  light  gray  coat.  He  was  in  no  mood  to  disclose  himself  to 
Flaxman.  The  inner  vision  was  fixed  with  extraordinary 
intensity  on  quite  another  sort  of  antagonist,  with  whom  the 
mind  was  continuously  grappling. 

'Ah,  well — till  to-morrow!'  said  Flaxman,  with  a  smile, 
shook  hands,  and  went. 

Outside  he  hailed  a  cab  and  drove  off  to  Lady  Charlotte's. 

He  found  his  aunt  and  Mr.  Wynnstay  in  the  drawing-room 
alone,  one  on  either  side  of  the  fire.  Lady  Charlotte  was  read- 
ing the  latest  political  biography  with  an  apparent  profundity 
of  attention ;  Mr.  Wynnstay  was  lounging  and  caressing  the 
cat.  But  both  his  aunt's  absorption  and  Mr.  Wynnstay's  non- 
chalance seemed  to  Flaxman  overdone.  He  suspected  a  domestic 
breeze. 

Lady  Charlotte  made  him  effusively  welcome.  He  had  come 
to  propose  that  she  should  accompany  him  the  following  evening 
to  hear  Elsmere  lecture. 

'  I  advise  you  to  come,'  he  said.  '  Elsmere  will  deliver  his 
soul,  and  the  amount  of  soul  he  has  to  deliver  in  these  dull  days 
is  astounding.  A  dowdy  dress  and  a  veil,  of  course.  I  will  go 
down  beforehand  and  see  some  one  on  the  spot,  in  case  there 
should  be  difficulties  about  getting  in.  Perhaps  Miss  Ley  burn, 
too,  might  like  to  hear  her  brother-in-law  J ' 

Really,  Hugh,'  cried  Lady  Charlotte  impatiently,  'I  think 


484  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

you  might  take  your  snubbing  with  dignity.  Her  refusal  this 
morning  to  go  to  Greenlaws  was  brusqueness  itself.  To  my 
mind  that  young  person  gives  herself  airs  ! '  And  the  Duke  of 
Sedbergh's  sister  drew  herself  up  with  a  rustle  of  all  her  ample 
frame. 

'  Yes,  I  was  snubbed,'  said  Flaxman,  unperturbed  ;  { that,  how- 
ever, is  no  reason  why  she  shouldn't  find  it  attractive  to  go  to- 
morrow night.' 

'And  you  will  let  her  see  that,  just  because  you  couldn't  get 
hold  of  her,  you  have  given  up  your  Easter  party  and  left  your 
sister  in  the  lurch  ? ' 

'  I  never  had  excessive  notions  of  dignity,'  he  replied  com- 
posedly. '  You  may  make  up  any  story  you  please.  The  real 
fact  is  that  I  want  to  hear  Elsmere.' 

'  You  had  better  go,  my  dear  ! '  said  her  husband  sardonically. 
'I  cannot  imagine  anything  more  piquant  than  an  atheistic 
slum  on  Easter  Eve.' 

'  Nor  can  I ! '  she  replied,  her  combativeness  rousing  at  once. 
'  Much  obliged  to  you,  Hugh.  I  will  borrow  my  housekeeper's 
dress,  and  be  ready  to  leave  here  at  half -past  seven.' 

Nothing  more  was  said  of  Rose,  but  Flaxman  knew  that  she 
would  be  asked,  and  let  it  alone. 

'  Will  his  wife  be  there  1 '  asked  Lady  Charlotte. 

'  Who  ?  Elsmere's  ?  My  dear  aunt,  when  you  happen  to  be 
the  orthodox  wife  of  a  rising  heretic,  your  husband's  opinions 
are  not  exactly  the  spectacular  performance  they  are  to  you  and 
me.  I  should  think  it  most  unlikely.' 

'  Oh,  she  persecutes  him,  does  she  ? ' 

'  She  wouldn't  be  a  woman  if  she  didn't ! '  observed  Mr.  Wynn- 
stay,  sotto  voce.  The  small  dark  man  was  lost  in  a  great  arm- 
chair, his  delicate  painter's  hands  playing  with  the  fur  of  a  huge 
Persian  cat.  Lady  Charlotte  threw  him  an  eagle  glance,  and  he 
subsided — for  the  moment. 

Flaxman,  however,  was  perfectly  right.  There  had  been  a 
breeze.  It  had  been  just  announced  to  the  master  of  the  house 
by  his  spouse  that  certain  Socialist  celebrities — who  might  any 
day  be  expected  to  make  acquaintance  with  the  police — were 
coming  to  dine  at  his  table,  to  finger  his  spoons,  and  mix  their 
diatribes  with  his  champagne,  on  the  following  Tuesday.  Overt 
rebellion  had  never  served  him  yet,  and  he  knew  perfectly  well 
that  when  it  came  to  the  point  he  should  smile  more  or  less 
affably  upon  these  gentry,  as  he  had  smiled  upon  others  of  the 
same  sort  before.  But  it  had  not  yet  come  to  the  point,  and  his 
intermediate  state  was  explosive  in  the  extreme. 

Mr.  Flaxman  dexterously  continued  the  subject  of  the  Els- 
meres.  Dropping  his  bantering  tone,  he  delivered  himself  of  a 
very  delicate  critical  analysis  of  Catherine  Elsmere's  tempera- 
ment and  position,  as  in  the  course  of  several  months  his  intimacy 
with  her  husband  had  revealed  them  to  him.  He  did  it  well, 
with  acuteness  and  philosophical  relish.  The  situation  presented 


CHAP,  xxxix  NEW  OPENINGS  485 

itself  to  him  as  an  extremely  refined  and  yet  tragic  phase  of  the 
religious  difficulty,  and  it  gave  him  intellectual  pleasure  to  draw 
it  out  in  words. 

Lady  Charlotte  sat  listening,  enjoying  her  nephew's  crisp 
phrases,  but  also  gradually  gaining  a  perception  of  the  human 
reality  behind  this  word-play  of  Hugh's.  That  '  good  heart '  of 
hers  was  touched ;  the  large  imperious  face  began  to  frown. 

'  Dear  me  ! '  she  said,  with  a  little  sigh.  '  Don't  go  on,  Hugh  ! 
I  suppose  it's  because  we  all  of  us  believe  so  little  that  the  poor 
thing  s  point  of  view  seems  to  one  so  unreal.  All  the  same,  how- 
ever/ she  added,  regaining  her  usual  r6le  of  magisterial  common- 
sense,  '  a  woman,  in  my  opinion,  ought  to  go  with  her  husband 
in  religious  matters.' 

'Provided,  of  course,  she  sets  him  at  nought  in  all  others,' 
put  in  Mr.  Wynnstay,  rising  and  daintily  depositing  the  cat. 
'  Many  men,  however,  my  dear,  might  be  willing  to  compromise 
it  differently.  Granted  a  certain  modicum  of  worldly  conformity, 
they  would  not  be  at  all  indisposed  to  a  conscience  clause.' 

He  lounged  out  of  the  room,  while  Lady  Charlotte  shrugged 
her  shoulders  with  a  look  at  her  nephew  in  which  there  was  an 
irrepressible  twinkle.  Mr.  Flaxman  neither  heard  nor  saw. 
Life  would  have  ceased  to  be  worth  having  long  ago  had  he  ever 
taken  sides  in  the  smallest  degree  in  this  manage. 

Flaxman  walked  home  again,  not  particularly  satisfied  with 
himself  and  his  manoeuvres.  Very  likely  it  was  quite  unwise  of 
liim  to  have  devised  another  meeting  between  himself  and  Rose 
Ley  burn  so  soon.  Certainly  she  had  snubbed  him — there  could 
be  no  doubt  of  that.  Nor  was  he  in  much  perplexity  as  to  the 
reason.  He  had  been  forgetting  himself,  forgetting  his  r61e  and 
the  whole  lie  of  the  situation,  and  if  a  man  will  be  an  idiot  he 
must  suffer  for  it.  He  had  distinctly  been  put  back  a  move. 

The  facts  were  very  simple.  It  was  now  nearly  three  months 
since  Langham's  disappearance.  During  that  time  Rose  Ley- 
burn  had  been,  to  Flaxman's  mind,  enchantingly  dependent  on 
him.  He  had  played  his  part  so  well,  and  the  beautiful  high- 
spirited  child  had  suited  herself  so  naively  to  his  acting  !  Evi- 
dently she  had  said  to  herself  that  his  age,  his  former  marriage, 
his  relation  to  Lady  Helen,  his  constant  kindness  to  her  and  her 
sister,  made  it  natural  that  she  should  trust  him,  make  him  her 
friend,  and  allow  him  an  intimacy  she  allowed  to  no  other  male 
friend.  And  when  once  the  situation  had  been  so  defined  in  her 
mind,  how  the  girl's  true  self  had  come  out ! — what  delightful 
moments  that  intimacy  had  contained  for  him  ! 

He  remembered  how  on  one  occasion  he  had  been  reading 
some  Browning  to  her  and  Helen,  in  Helen's  crowded  belittered 
drawing-room,  which  seemed  all  piano  and  photographs  and 
lilies  of  the  valley.  He  never  could  exactly  trace  the  connection 
between  the  passage  he  had  been  reading  and  what  happened. 
Probably  it  was  merely  Browning's  poignant  passionate  note 
that  had  affected  her.  In  spite  of  all  her  proud  bright  reserve, 


486  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

both  he  and  Helen  often  felt  through  these  weeks  that  just 
below  this  surface  there  was  a  heart  which  quivered  at  the  least 
touch. 

He  finished  the  lines  and  laid  down  the  book.  Lady  Helen 
heard  her  three-year-old  boy  crying  upstairs,  and  ran  up  to  see 
what  was  the  matter.  He  and  Rose  were  left  alone  in  the 
scented  fire-lit  room.  And  a  jet  of  flame  suddenly  showed  him 
the  girl's  face  turned  away,  convulsed  with  a  momentary  struggle 
for  self-control.  She  raised  a  hand  an  instant  to  her  eyes,  not 
dreaming  evidently  that  she  could  be  seen  in  the  dimness  ;  and 
her  gloves  dropped  from  her  lap. 

He  moved  forward,  stooped  on  one  knee,  and  as  she  held  out 
her  hand  for  the  gloves,  he  kissed  the  hand  very  gently,  detain- 
ing it  afterwards  as  a  brother  might.  There  was  not  a  thought 
of  himself  in  his  mind.  Simply  he  could  not  bear  that  so  bright 
a  creature  should  ever  be  sorry.  It  seemed  to  him  intolerable, 
against  the  nature  of  things.  If  he  could  have  procured  for  her 
at  that  moment  a  coerced  and  transformed  Langham,  a  Lang- 
ham  fitted  to  make  her  happy,  he  could  almost  have  done  it ; 
and,  short  of  such  radical  consolation,  the  very  least  he  could  do 
was  to  go  on  his  knee  to  her,  and  comfort  her  in  tender  brotherly 
fashion. 

She  did  not  say  anything  ;  she  let  her  hand  stay  a  moment, 
and  then  she  got  up,  put  on  her  veil,  left  a  quiet  message  for 
Lady  Helen,  and  departed.  But  as  he  put  her  into  a  hansom  her 
whole  manner  to  him  was  full  of  a  shy  shrinking  sweetness. 
And  when  Rose  was  shy  and  shrinking  she  was  adorable. 

Well,  and  now  he  had  never  again  gone  nearly  so  far  as  to 
kiss  her  hand,  and  yet  because  of  an  indiscreet  moment  every- 
thing was  changed  between  them  ;  she  had  turned  resentful, 
stand-off,  nay,  as  nearly  rude  as  a  girl  under  the  restraints  of 
modern  manners  can  manage  to  be.  He  almost  laughed  as  he 
recalled  Helen's  report  of  her  interview  with  Rose  that  morning, 
in  which  she  had  tried  to  persuade  a  young  person  outrageously 
on  her  dignity  to  keep  an  engagement  she  had  herself  spontane- 
ously made. 

'  I  am  very  sorry,  Lady  Helen,'  Rose  had  said,  her  slim  figure 
drawn  up  so  stiffly  that  the  small  Lady  Helen  felt  herself  totally 
effaced  beside  her.  'But  I  had  rather  not  leave  London  this 
week.  I  think  I  will  stay  with  mamma  and  Agnes.' 

And  nothing  Lady  Helen  could  say  moved  her,  or  modified 
her  formula  of  refusal. 

'  What  have  you  been  doing,  Hugh  1 '  his  sister  asked  him,  half 
dismayed,  half  provoked. 

Flaxman  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  vowed  he  had  been  doing 
nothing.  But,  in  truth,  he  knew  very  well  that  the  day  before 
he  had  overstepped  the  line.  There  had  been  a  little  scene  be- 
tween them,  a  quick  passage  of  speech,  a  rash  look  and  gesture 
on  his  part,  which  had  been  quite  unpremeditated,  but  which 
had  nevertheless  transformed  their  relation.  Rose  had  flushed 


CHAP,  xxxix  NEW  OPENINGS  487 

up,  had  said  a  few  incoherent  words,  which  he  had  understood 
to  be  words  of  reproach,  had  left  Lady  Helen's  as  quickly  as 
possible,  and  next  morning  his  Greenlaws  party  had  fallen 
through. 

'Check,  certainly,'  said  Flaxman  to  himself  ruefully,  as  he 
pondered  these  circumstances — 'not  mate,  I  hope,  if  one  can 
but  find  out  how  not  to  be  a  fool  in  future.' 

And  over  his  solitary  fire  he  meditated  far  into  the  night. 

Next  day,  at  half -past  seven  in  the  evening,  he  entered 
Lady  Charlotte's  drawing-room,  gayer,  brisker,  more  alert  than 
ever. 

Rose  started  visibly  at  the  sight  of  him,  and  shot  a  quick 
glance  at  the  unblushing  Lady  Charlotte. 

'  I  thought  you  were  at  Greenlaws,'  she  could  not  help  saying 
to  him,  as  she  coldly  offered  him  her  hand.  Why  had  Lady 
Charlotte  never  told  her  he  was  to  escort  them  1  Her  irritation 
rose  anew. 

'  What  can  one  do,'  he  said  lightly,  '  if  Elsmere  will  fix  such  a 
performance  for  Easter  Eve  ?  My  party  was  at  its  last  gasp  too ; 
it  only  wanted  a  telegram  to  Helen  to  give  it  its  coup  de  grdce.' 

Rose  flushed  up,  but  he  turned  on  his  heel  at  once,  and  began 
to  banter  his  aunt  on  the  housekeeper's  bonnet  and  veil  in 
which  she  had  a  little  too  obviously  disguised  herself. 

And  certainly,  in  the  drive  to  the  East  End,  Rose  had  no 
reason  to  complain  of  importunity  on  his  part.  Most  of  the 
way  he  was  deep  in  talk  with  Lady  Charlotte  as  to  a  certain 
loan  exhibition  in  the  East  End,  to  which  he  and  a  good  many 
of  his  friends  were  sending  pictures  ;  apparently  his  time  and 
thoughts  were  entirely  occupied  with  it.  Rose,  leaning  back 
silent  in  her  corner,  was  presently  seized  with  a  little  shock  of 
surprise  that  there  should  be  so  many  interests  and  relations  in 
his  life  of  which  she  knew  nothing.  He  was  talking  now  as  the 
man  of  possessions  and  influence.  She  saw  a  glimpse  of  him  as 
he  was  in  his  public  aspect,  and  the  kindness,  the  disinterested- 
ness, the  quiet  sense,  and  the  humour  of  his  talk  insensibly 
affected  her  as  she  sat  listening.  The  mental  image  of  him 
which  had  been  dominant  in  her  mind  altered  a  little.  Nay, 
she  grew  a  little  hot  over  it.  She  asked  herself  scornfully 
whether  she  were  not  as  ready  as  any  bread-and-butter  miss  of 
her  acquaintance  to  imagine  every  man  she  knew  in  love  with 
her. 

Very  likely  he  had  meant  what  he  said  quite  differently,  and 
she — on  !  humiliation — had  flown  into  a  passion  with  him  for 
no  reasonable  cause.  Supposing  he  had  meant,  two  days  ago, 
that  if  they  were  to  go  on  being  friends  she  must  let  him  be  her 
lover  too,  it  would  of  course  nave  been  unpardonable.  How 
could  she  let  any  one  talk  to  her  of  love  yet — especially  Mr. 
Flaxman,  who  guessed,  as  she  was  quite  sure,  what  had  hap- 
pened to  her  ?  He  must  despise  her  to  have  imagined  it.  His 
outburst  had  filled  her  with  the  oddest  and  most  petulant 


488  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

resentment.  Were  all  men  self-seeking  ?  Did  all  men  think 
women  shallow  and  fickle  ?  Could  a  man  and  a  woman  never 
be  honestly  and  simply  friends  ?  If  he  had  made  love  to  her,  he 
could  not  possibly — and  there  was  the  sting  of  it — feel  towards 
her  maiden  dignity  that  romantic  respect  which  she  herself 
cherished  towards  it.  For  it  was  incredible  that  any  delicate- 
minded  girl  should  go  through  such  a  crisis  as  she  had  gone 
through,  and  then  fall  calmly  into  another  lover's  arms  a  few 
weeks  later  as  though  nothing  had  happened. 

How  we  all  attitudinise  to  ourselves  !  The  whole  of  life  often 
seems  one  long  dramatic  performance,  in  which  one  half  of  us  is 
for  ever  posing  to  the  other  half. 

But  had  he  really  made  love  to  her  1 — had  he  meant  what  she 
had  assumed  him  to  mean  ?  The  girl  lost  herself  in  a  torment 
of  memory  and  conjecture,  and  meanwhile  Mr.  Flaxman  sat 
opposite,  talking  away,  and  looking  certainly  as  little  love-sick 
as  any  man  can  well  look.  As  the  lamps  flashed  into  the  carriage 
her  attention  was  often  caught  by  his  profile  and  finely-balanced 
head,  by  the  hand  lying  on  his  knee,  or  the  little  gestures,  full 
of  life  and  freedom,  with  which  he  met  some  raid  of  Lady 
Charlotte's  on  his  opinions,  or  opened  a  corresponding  one  on 
hers.  There  was  certainly  power  in  the  man,  a  bright  human 
sort  of  power,  which  inevitably  attracted  her.  And  that  he 
was  good  too  she  had  special  grounds  for  knowing. 

But  what  an  aristocrat  he  was  after  all !  What  an  over- 
prosperous  exclusive  set  he  belonged  to !  She  lashed  herself 
into  anger  as  the  other  two  chatted  and  sparred,  with  all  these 
names  of  wealthy  cousins  and  relations,  with  their  parks  and 
their  pedigrees  and  their  pictures  !  The  aunt  and  nephew  were 
debating  how  they  could  best  bleed  the  family,  in  its  various 
branches,  of  the  art  treasures  belonging  to  it  for  the  benefit  of 
the  East-Enders;  therefore  the  names  were  inevitable.  But 
Rose  curled  her  delicate  lip  over  them.  And  was  it  the  best 
breeding,  she  wondered,  to  leave  a  third  person  so  ostentatiously 
outside  the  conversation  ? 

'  Miss  Leyburn,  why  are  you  coughing  ? '  said  Lady  Charlotte 
suddenly. 

'  There  is  a  great  draught,'  said  Rose,  shivering  a  little. 

'  So  there  is ! '  cried  Lady  Charlotte.  '  Why,  we  have  got 
both  the  windows  open.  Hugh,  draw  up  Miss  Leyburn's.' 

He  moved  over  to  her  and  drew  it  up. 

'I  thought  you  liked  a  tornado,'  he  said  to  her,  smiling. 
'  Will  you  have  a  shawl  ? — there  is  one  behind  me.' 

'  No,  thank  you,'  she  replied  rather  stiffly,  and  he  was  silent 
— retaining  his  place  opposite  to  her,  however. 

'Have  we  reached  Mr.  Elsmere's  part  of  the  world  yet?' 
asked  Lady  Charlotte,  looking  out. 

'  Yes,  we  are  not  far  off — the  river  is  to  our  right.  We  shall 
pass  St.  Wilfrid's  soon.' 

The  coachman  turned  into  a  street  where  an  open-air  market 


CHAP,  xxxix  NEW  OPENINGS  489 

was  going  on.  The  roadway  and  pavements  were  swarming  • 
the  carriage  could  barely  pick  its  way  through  the  masses  01 
human  beings.  Flaming  gas-jets  threw  it  all  into  strong  satanic 
light  and  shade.  At  the  corner  of  a  dingy  alley  Rose  could  see 
a  fight  going  on ;  the  begrimed  ragged  children,  regardless  of 
the  April  rain,  swooped  backwards  and  forwards  under  the 
very  hoofs  of  the  horses,  or  flattened  their  noses  against  the 
windows  whenever  the  horses  were  forced  into  a  walk. 

The  young  girl-figure  in  gray,  with  the  gray  feathered  hat, 
seemed  specially  to  excite  their  notice.  The  glare  of  the  street 
brought  out  the  lines  of  the  face,  the  gold  of  the  hair.  The 
Arabs  outside  made  loutishly  flattering  remarks  once  or  twice, 
and  Rose,  colouring,  drew  back  as  far  as  she  could  into  the 
carriage.  Mr.  Flaxman  seemed  not  to  hear ;  his  aunt,  with  that 
obtrusive  thirst  for  information  which  is  so  fashionable  now 
among  all  women  of  position,  was  cross-questioning  him  as  to 
the  trades  and  population  of  the  district,  and  he  was  drily 
responding.  In  reality  his  mind  was  full  of  a  whirl  of  feeling, 
of  a  wild  longing  to  break  down  a  futile  barrier  and  trample  on 
a  baffling  resistance,  to  take  that  beautiful  tameless  creature  in 
strong  coercing  arms,  scold  her,  crush  her,  love  her  !  Why  does 
she  make  happiness  so  difficult  ?  What  right  has  she  to  hold 
devotion  so  cheap  ?  He  too  grows  angry.  '  She  was  not  in  love 
with  that  spectral  creature,'  the  inner  self  declares  with  energy 
— 'I  will  vow  she  never  was.  But  she  is  like  all  the  rest — a 
slave  to  the  merest  forms  and  trappings  of  sentiment.  Because 
he  ought  to  have  loved  her,  and  didn't,  because  she  fancied  she 
loved  him,  and  didn't,  my  love  is  to  be  an  offence  to  her ! 
Monstrous — unjust ! ' 

Suddenly  they  sped  past  St.  Wilfrid's,  resplendent  with  lights, 
the  jewelled  windows  of  the  choir  rising  above  the  squalid  walls 
and  roofs  into  the  rainy  darkness,  as  the  mystical  chapel  of  the 
Graal,  with  its  'torches  glimmering  fair,'  flashed  out  of  the 
mountain  storm  and  solitude  on  to  Galahad's  seeking  eyes. 

Rose  bent  forward  involuntarily.  '  What  angel  singing ! '  she 
said,  dropping  the  window  again  to  listen  to  the  retreating 
sounds,  her  artist's  eye  kindling.  '  Did  you  hear  it  ?  It  was  the 
last  chorus  in  the  St.  Matthew  Passion  music.' 

'I  did  not  distinguish  it,'  he  said — 'but  their  music  is 
famous.' 

His  tone  was  distant ;  there  was  no  friendliness  in  it.  It 
wpuld  have  been  pleasant  to  her  if  he  would  have  taken  up  her 
little  remark  and  let  bygones  be  bygones.  But  he  showed  no 
readiness  to  do  so.  The  subject  dropped,  and  presently  he 
moved  back  to  his  former  seat,  and  Lady  Charlotte*  and  he  re- 
sumed their  talk.  Rose  could  not  but  see  that  his  manner 
towards  her  was  much  changed.  She  herself  had  compelled  it, 
but  all  the  same  she  saw  him  leave  her  with  a  capricious  little 
pang  of  regret,  and  afterwards  the  drive  seemed  to  her  more 
tedious  and  the  dismal  streets  more  dismal  than  before. 


490  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

She  tried  to  forget  her  companions  altogether.  Oh !  what 
would  Robert  have  to  say  1  She  was  unhappy,  restless.  In  her 
trouble  lately  it  had  often  pleased  her  to  go  quite  alone  to 
strange  churches,  where  for  a  moment  the  burden  of  the  self 
had  seemed  lightened.  But  the  old  things  were  not  always  con- 

fsnial  to  her,  and  there  were  modern  ferments  at  work  in  her. 
o  one  of  her  family,  unless  it  were  Agnes,  suspected  what  was 
going  on.  But  in  truth  the  rich  crude  nature  had  been  touched 
at  last,  as  Robert's  had  been  long  ago  in  Mr.  Grey's  lecture- 
room,  by  the  piercing  under- voices  of  things — the  moral  message 
of  the  world.  'What  will  he  have  to  say?'  she  asked  herself 
again  feverishly,  and  as  she  looked  across  to  Mr.  Flaxman  she 
felt  a  childish  wish  to  be  friends  again  with  him,  with  every- 
body. Life  was  too  difficult  as  it  was,  without  quarrels  and 
misunderstandings  to  make  it  worse. 


CHAPTER   XL 

A  LONG  street  of  warehouses — and  at  the  end  of  it  the  horses 
slackened.  . 

'I  saw  the  president  of  the  club  yesterday,'  said  Flaxman, 
looking  out.  '  He  is  an  old  friend  of  mine — a  most  intelligent 
fanatic — met  him  on  a  Mansion  House  Fund  committee  last 
winter.  He  promised  we  should  be  looked  after.  But  we  shall 
only  get  back  seats,  and  you'll  have  to  put  up  with  the  smoking. 
They  don't  want  ladies,  and  we  shall  only  be  there  on  suf- 
ferance.' 

The  carriage  stopped.  Mr.  Flaxman  guided  his  charges  with 
some  difficulty  through  the  crowd  about  the  steps,  who  inspected 
them  and  their  vehicle  with  a  frank  and  not  over -friendly 
curiosity.  At  the  door  they  found  a  man  who  had  been  sent  to 
look  for  them,  and  were  immediately  taken  possession  of.  He 
ushered  them  into  the  back  of  a  large  bare  hall,  glaringly  lit, 
lined  with  white  brick,  and  hung  at  intervals  with  political 
portraits  and  a  few  cheap  engravings  of  famous  men,  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  taking  his  turn  with  Buddha,  Socrates,  Moses,  Shake- 
speare, and  Paul  of  Tarsus. 

'Can't  put  you  any  forrarder,  I'm  afraid,'  said  their  guide, 
with  a  shrug  of  the  shoulders.  'The  committee  don't  like 
strangers  coming,  and  Mr.  Collett,  he  got  hauled -over  the  coals 
for  letting  you  in  this  evening.' 

It  was  a^new  position  for  Lady  Charlotte  to  be  anywhere  on 
sufferance.*  However,  in  the  presence  of  three  hundred  smoking 
men,  who  might  all  of  them  be  political  assassins  in  disguise 
for  anything  she  knew,  she  accepted  her  fate  with  meekness ; 
and  she  and  Rose  settled  themselves  into  their  back  seat  under 
a  rough  sort  of  gallery,  glad  of  their  veils,  and  nearly  blinded 
with  the  smoke. 


CHAP.  XL  NEW  OPENINGS  491 

The  hall  was  nearly  full,  and  Mr.  Flaxrnan  looked  curiously 
round  upon  its  occupants.  The  majority  of  them  were  clearly 
artisans— a  spare,  stooping,  sharp -featured  race.  Here  and 
there  were  a  knot  of  stalwart  dock-labourers,  strongly  marked 
out  in  physique  from  the  watchmakers  and  the  potters,  or  an 
occasional  seaman  out  of  work,  ship-steward,  boatswain,  or  what 
not,  generally  bronzed,  quick-eyed,  and  comely,  save  where  the 
film  of  excess  had  already  deadened  colour  and  expression. 
Almost  every  one  had  a  pot  of  beer  before  him,  standing  on  long 
wooden  flaps  attached  to  the  benches.  The  room  was  full  of 
noise,  coming  apparently  from  the  farther  end,  where  sortie 
political  bravo  seemed  to  be  provoking  his  neighbours.  In  their 
own  vicinity  the  men  scattered  about  were  for  the  most  part 
tugging  silently  at  their  pipes,  alternately  eyeing  the  clock  and 
the  new-comers. 

There  was  a  stir  of  feet  round  the  door. 

'  There  he  is,'  said  Mr.  Flaxman,  craning  round  to  see,  and 
Robert  entered. 

He  started  as  he  saw  them,  flashed  a  smile  to  Rose,  shook  his 
head  at  Mr.  Flaxman,  and  passed  up  the  room. 

'He  looks  pale  and  nervous,'  said  Lady  Charlotte  grimly, 
pouncing  at  once  on  the  unpromising  side  of  things.  'If  he 
breaks  down  are  vou  prepared,  Hugh,  to  play  Elisha  ? ' 

Flaxman  was  far  too  much  interested  in  the  beginnings  of 
the  performance  to  answer. 

Robert  was  standing  forward  on  the  platform,  the  chairman 
of  the  meeting  at  his  side,  members  of  the  committee  sitting 
behind  on  either  hand.  A  good  many  men  put  down  their  pipes, 
and  the  hubbub  of  talk  ceased.  Others  smoked  on  stolidly. 

The  chairman  introduced  the  lecturer.  The  subject  of  the 
address  would  be,  as  they  already  knew,  'The  Claim  of  Jesus 
upon  Modern  Life.'  It  was  not  very  likely,  he  imagined,  that 
Mr.  Elsmere's  opinions  would  square  with  those  dominant  in 
the  club  ;  but,  whether  or  no;  he  claimed  for  him,  as  for  every- 
body, a  patient  hearing,  and  the  Englishman's  privilege  of  fair 
play. 

The  speaker,  a  cabinetmaker  dressed  in  a  decent  brown  suit, 
spoke  with  fluency,  and  at  the  same  time  with  that  accent  of 
moderation  and  savoir  faire  which  some  Englishmen  in  all 
classes  have  obviously  inherited  from  centuries  of  government 
by  discussion.  Lady  Charlotte,  whose  Liberalism  was  the  mere 
varnish  of  an  essentially  aristocratic  temper,  was  conscious  of 
a  certain  dismay  at  the  culture  of  the  democracy  as  the  man  sat 
down.  Mr.  Flaxman,  glancing  to  the  right,  saw  a  group  of  men 
standing,  and  amongst  them  a  slight  sharp -featured  thread- 
paper  of  a  man,  with  a  taller  companion,  whom  he  identified  as 
the  pair  he  had  noticed  on  the  night  of  the  story-telling.  The 
little  gasfitter  was  clearly  all  nervous  fidget  and  expectation  ; 
the  other,  large  and  gaunt  in  figure,  with  a  square  impassive 
face,  and  close-shut  lips  that  had  a  perpetual  mocking  twist  in 


492  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

the  corners,  stood  beside  him  like  some  clumsy  modern  version, 
in  a  commoner  clay,  of  Goethe's  '  spirit  that  denies.' 

Robert  came  forward  with  a  roll  of  papers  in  his  hand. 

His  first  words  were  hardly  audible.  Rose  felt  her  colour 
rising,  Lady  Charlotte  glanced  at  her  nephew,  the  standing 
group  of  men  cried, '  Speak  up  ! '  The  voice  in  the  distance  rose 
at  once,  braced  by  the  touch  of  difficulty,  and  what  it  said  came 
firmly  down  to  them. 

In  after  days  Flaxman  could  not  often  be  got  to  talk  of  the 
experience  of  this  evening.  When  he  did  he  would  generally 
say,  briefly,  that  as  an  intellectual  effort  he  had  never  been 
inclined  to  rank  this  first  public  utterance  very  high  among 
Elsmere's  performances.  The  speaker's  own  emotion  had  stood 
somewhat  in  his  way.  A  man  argues  better,  perhaps,  when  he 
feels  less. 

'I  have  often  heard  him  put  his  case,  as  I  thought,  more 
cogently  in  conversation,'  Flaxman  would  say — though  only  to 
his  most  intimate  friends — 'but  what  I  never  saw  before  or 
since  was  such  an  effect  of  personality  as  he  produced  that 
night.  From  that  moment,  at  any  rate,  I  loved  him,  and  I 
understood  his  secret ! ' 

Elsm'ere  began  with  a  few  words  of  courteous  thanks  to  the 
club  for  the  hearing  they  had  promised  him. 

Then  he  passed  on  to  the  occasion  of  his  address — the  vogue 
in  the  district  of  '  certain  newspapers  which,  I  understand,  are 
specially  relished  and  patronised  by  your  association.^ 

And  he  laid  down  on  a  table  beside  him  the  copies  of  the 
Freethinker  and  of  Faith  and  Fools  which  he  had  brought  with 
him,  and  faced  his  audience  again,  his  hands  on  his  sides. 

'  Well !  I  am  not  here  to-night  to  attack  those  newspapers. 
I  want  to  reach  your  sympathies  if  I  can  in  another  way.  If 
there  is  anybody  here  who  takes  pleasure  in  them,  who  thinks 
that  such  writing  and  such  witticisms  as  he  gets  purveyed  to 
him  in  these  sheets  do  really  help  the  cause  of  truth  and  in- 
tellectual freedom,  I  shall  not  attack  his  position  from  the 
front.  I  shall  try  to  undermine  it.  I  shall  aim  at  rousing  in 
him  such  a  state  of  feeling  as  may  suddenly  convince  him  that 
what  is  injured  by  writing  of  this  sort  is  not  the  orthodox 
Christian,  or  the  Church,  or  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  but  always  and 
inevitably  the  man  who  writes  it  and  the  man  who  loves  it ! 
His  mind  is  possessed  of  an  inflaming  and  hateful  image,  which 
drives  him  to  mockery  and  violence.  I  want  to  replace  it,  if  I 
can,  by  one  of  calm,  of  beauty  and  tenderness,  which  may  drive 
him  to  humility  and  sympathy.  And  this,  indeed,  is  the  only 
way  in  which  opinion  is  ever  really  altered— by  the  substitution 
of  one  mental  picture  for  another. 

'  But  in  the  first  place,'  resumed  the  speaker,  after  a  moment's 
pause,  changing  his  note  a  little,  '  a  word  about  myself.  I  am 
not  here  to-night  quite  in  the  position  of  the  casual  stranger, 
coming  down  to  your  district  for  the  first  time.  As  some  of  you 


CHAP.  XL  NEW  OPENINGS  493 

know,  I  am  endeavouring  to  make  what  is  practically  a  settle- 
ment among  you,  asking  you  working-men  to  teach  me,  if  you 
will,  what  you  have  to  teach  as  to  the  wants  and  prospects  of 
your  order,  and  offering  you  in  return  whatever  there  is  in  me 
which  may  be  worth  your  taking.  Well,  I  imagine  I  should 
look  at  a  man  who  preferred  a  claim  of  that  sort  with  some 
closeness !  You  may  well  ask  me  for  "  antecedents,"  and  I 
should  like,  if  I  may,  to  give  them  to  you  very  shortly. 

'Well,  then,  though  I  came  down  to  this  place  under  the 
wing  of  Mr.  Edwardes'  (some  cheering)  'who  is  so  greatly  liked 
and  respected  here,  I  am  not  a  Unitarian,  nor  am  I  an  English 
Churchman.  A  year  ago  I  was  the  vicar  of  an  English  country 
parish,  where  I  should  have  been  proud,  so  far  as  personal 
happiness  went,  to  spend  my  life.  Last  autumn  I  left  it  and 
resigned  my  orders  because  I  could  no  longer  accept  the  creed 
of  the  English  Church.'  Unconsciously  the  thin  dignified  figure 
drew  itself  up,  the  voice  took  a  certain  dryness.  All  this  was 
distasteful,  but  the  orator's  instinct  was  imperious. 

As  he  spoke  about  a  score  of  pipes  which  had  till  now  been 
active  in  Flaxman's  neighbourhood  went  down.  The  silence  in 
the  room  became  suddenly  of  a  perceptibly  different  quality. 

'Since  then  I  have  joined  no  other  religious  association. 
But  it  is  not — God  forbid  ! — because  there  is  nothing  left  me  to 
believe,  but  because  in  this  transition  England  it  is  well  for  a 
man  who  has  broken  with  the  old  things,  to  be  very  patient. 
No  good  can  come  of  forcing  opinion  or  agreement  prematurely. 
A  generation,  nay,  more,  may  have  to  spend  itself  in  mere 
waiting  and  preparing  for  those  new  leaders  and  those  new 
forms  of  corporate  action  which  any  great  revolution  of  opinion, 
such  as  that  we  are  now  living  through,  has  always  produced  in 
the  past,  and  will,  we  are  justified  in  believing,  produce  again. 
But  the  hour  and  the  men  will  come,  and  "  they  also  serve  who 
only  stand  and  wait !  " ' 

Voice  and  look  had  kindled  into  fire.  The  consciousness  of 
his  audience  was  passing  from  him — the  world  of  ideas  was 
growing  clearer. 

'So  much,  then,  for  personalities  of  one  sort.  There  are 
some  of  another,  however,  which  I  must  touch  upon  for  a 
moment.  I  am  to  speak  to  you  to-night  of  the  Jesus  of  history, 
but  not  only  as  an  historian.  History  is  good,  but  religion  is 
better! — and  if  Jesus  of  Nazareth  concerned  me,  and,  in  my 
belief,  concerned  you,  only  as  an  historical  figure,  I  should  not 
be  here  to-night. 

'  But  if  I  am  to  talk  religion  to  you,  and  I  have  begun  by 
telling  you  I  am  not  this  and  not  that,  it  seems  to  me  that  for 
mere  clearness'  sake,  for  the  sake  of  that  round  and  whole  image 
of  thought  which  I  want  to  present  to  you,  you  must  let  me  run 
through  a  preliminary  confession  of  faith — as  short  and  simple 
as  I  can  make  it.  You  must  let  me  describe  certain  views  of 
the  universe  and  of  man's  place  in  it,  which  make  the  frame- 


494  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

work,  as  it  were,  into  which  I  shall  ask  you  to  fit  the  picture  of 
Jesus  which  will  come  after.' 

Robert  stood  a  moment  considering.  An  instant's  nervous- 
ness, a  momentary  sign  of  self -consciousness,  would  have 
broken  the  spell  and  set  the  room  against  him.  He  showed 
neither. 

'  My  friends,'  he  said  at  last,  speaking  to  the  crowded  benches 
of  London  workmen  with  the  same  simplicity  he  would  have 
used  towards  his  boys  at  Murewell,  '  the  man  who  is  addressing 
you  to-night  believes  in  God;  and  in  Conscience,  which  is  God's 
witness  in  the  soul ;  and  in  Experience,  which  is  at  once  the 
record  and  the  instrument  of  man's  education  at  God's  hands. 
He  places  his  whole  trust,  for  life  and  death,  "  in  God  the  Father 
Almighty" — in  that  force  at  the  root  of  things  which  is  revealed 
to  us  whenever  a  man  helps  his  neighbour,  or  a  mother  denies 
herself  for  her  child  ;  whenever  a  soldier  dies  without  a  murmur 
for  his  country,  or  a  sailor  puts  out  in  the  darkness  to  rescue 
the  perishing;  whenever  a  workman  throws  mind  and  con- 
science into  his  work,  or  a  statesman  labours  not  for  his  own 
gain  but  for  that  or  the  State !  He  believes  in  an  Eternal 
Goodness — and  an  Eternal  Mind — of  which  Nature  and  Man 
are  the  continuous  and  the  only  revelation.  .  .  . ' 

The  room  grew  absolutely  still.  And  into  the  silence  there 
fell,  one  by  one,  the  short  terse  sentences,  in  which  the  seer,  the 
believer,  struggled  to  express  what  God  has  been,  is,  and  will 
ever  be  to  the  soul  which  trusts  Him.  In  them  the  whole  effort 
of  the  speaker  was  really  to  restrain,  to  moderate,  to  deper- 
sonalise the  voice  of  faith.  But  the  intensity  of  each  word 
burnt  it  into  the  hearer  as  it  was  spoken.  Even  Lady  Charlotte 
turned  a  little  pale — the  tears  stood  in  her  eyes. 

Then,  from  the  witness  of  God  in  the  soul,  and  in  the  history 
of  mans  moral  life,  Elsmere  turned  to  the  glorification  of 
Experience,  '  of  that  unvarying  and  rational  order  of  the  world 
which  has  been  the  appointed  instrument  of  man's  training 
since  life  and  thought  began.' 

'  There,'  he  said  slowly, '  in  the  unbroken  sequences  of  nature, 
in  the  physical  history  of  the  world,  in  the  long  history  of  man, 
physical,  intellectual,  moral — there  lies  the  revelation  of  God. 
There  is  no  other,  my  friends  ! ' 

Then,  while  the  room  hung  on  his  words,  he  entered  on  a 
brief  exposition  of  the  text,  '  Miracles  do  not  happen,'  restating 
Hume's  old  argument,  and  adding  to  it  some  of  the  most  cogent 
of  those  modern  arguments  drawn  from  literature,  from  history, 
from  the  comparative  study  of  religions  and  religious  evidence, 
which  were  not  practically  at  Hume's  disposal,  but  which  are 
now  affecting  the  popular  mind  as  Hume's  reasoning  could 
never  have  affected  it. 

'  We  are  now  able  to  show  how  miracle,  or  the  belief  in  it, 
which  is  the  same  thing,  comes  into  being.  The  study  of 
miracle  in  all  nations,  and  under  all  conditions,  yields  every- 


CHAP.  XL  NEW  OPENINGS  495 

where  the  same  results.  Miracle  may  be  the  child  of  imagina- 
tion, of  love,  nay,  of  a  passionate  sincerity,  but  invariably  it 
lives  with  ignorance  and  is  withered  by  knowledge  ! ' 

And  then,  with  lightning  unexpectedness,  he  turned  upon 
his  audience,  as  though  the  ardent  soul  reacted  at  once  against 
a  strain  of  mere  negation. 

'But  do  not  let  yourselves  imagine  for  an  instant  that, 
because  in  a  rational  view  of  history  there  is  no  place  for  a 
Resurrection  and  Ascension,  therefore  you  may  profitably  allow 
yourself  a  mean  and  miserable  mirth  of  this  sort  over  the  past !' 
— and  his  outstretched  hand  struck  the  newspapers  beside  him 
with  passion.  'Do  not  imagine  for  an  instant  that  what  is 
binding,  adorable,  beautiful  in  that  past  is  done  away  with 
when  miracle  is  given  up  !  No,  thank  God  !  We  still  "live  by 
admiration,  hope,  and  love."  God  only  draws  closer,  great  men 
become  greater,  human  life  more  wonderful  as  miracle  dis- 
appears. Woe  to  you  if  you  cannot  see  it ! — it  is  the  testing 
truth  of  our  day. 

'  And  besides — do  you  suppose  that  mere  violence,  mere  in- 
vective, and  savage  mockery  ever  accomplished  anything — nay, 
what  is  more  to  the  point,  ever  destroyed  anything  in  human 
liistory  ?  No — an  idea  cannot  be  killed  from  without — it  can 
only  be  supplanted,  transformed,  by  another  idea,  and  that  one 
of  equal  virtue  and  magic.  Strange  paradox !  In  the  moral 
world  you  cannot  pull  down  except  by  gentleness — you  cannot 
revolutionise  except  by  sympathy.  Jesus  only  superseded 
Judaism  by  absorbing  and  recreating  all  that  was  best  in  it. 
There  are  no  inexplicable  gaps  and  breaks  in  the  story  of 
humanity.  The  religion  of  to-day,  with  all  its  faults  and  mis- 
takes, will  go  on  unshaken  so  long  as  there  is  nothing  else  of 
equal  loveliness  and  potency  to  put  in  its  place.  The  Jesus  of 
the  churches  will  remain  paramount  so  long  as  the  man  of  to-day 
imagines  himself  dispensed  by  any  increase  of  knowledge  from 
loving  the  Jesus  of  history. 

'  But  why  ?  you  will  ask  me.  What  does  the  Jesus  of  history 
matter  to  me  ?' 

And  so  he  was  brought  to  the  place  of  great  men  in  the 
development  of  mankind — to  the  part  played  in  the  human 
story  by  those  lives  in  which  men  nave  seen  all  their  noblest 
thoughts  of  God,  of  duty,  and  of  law  embodied,  realised  before 
them  with  a  shining  ana  incomparable  beauty. 

' .  .  .  You  think — because  it  is  becoming  plain  to  the  modern 
eye  that  the  ignorant  love  of  his  first  followers  wreathed  his  life 
in  legend,  that  therefore  you  can  escape  from  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
you  can  put  him  aside  as  though  he  had  never  been  1  Folly  ! 
Do  what  you  will,  you  cannot  escape  him.  His  life  and  death 
underlie  our  institutions  as  the  alphabet  underlies  our  literature. 
Just  as  the  lives  of  Buddha  and  of  Mohammed  are  wrought  in- 
efiaceably  into  the  civilisation  of  Africa  and  Asia,  so  the  life  of 
Jesus  is  wrought  ineffaceably  into  the  higher  civilisation,  the 


496  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

nobler  social  conceptions  of  Europe.  It  is  wrought  into  your 
being  and  into  mine.  We  are  what  we  are  to-night,  as  English- 
men and  as  citizens,  largely  because  a  Galilean  peasant  was 
born  and  grew  to  manhood,  and  preached,  and  loved,  and  died. 
And  you  think  that  a  fact  so  tremendous  can  be  just  scoffed 
away — that  we  can  get  rid  of  it,  and  of  our  share  in  it,  by  a 
ribald  paragraph  and  a  caricature  ! 

'No.  Your  hatred  and  your  ridicule  are  powerless.  And 
thank  God  they  are  powerless.  There  is  no  wanton  waste  in 
the  moral  world,  any  more  than  in  the  material.  There  is  only 
fruitful  change  and  beneficent  transformation.  Granted  that 
the  true  story  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  was  from  the  beginning 
obscured  by  error  and  mistake ;  granted  that  those  errors  and 
mistakes  which  were  once  the  strength  of  Christianity  are  now 
its  weakness,  and  by  the  slow  march  and  sentence  of  time  are 
now  threatening,  unless  we  can  clear  them  away,  to  lessen  the 
hold  of  Jesus  on  the  love  and  remembrance  of  man.  What 
then  1  The  fact  is  merely  a  call  to  you  and  me,  who  recognise 
it,  to  go  back  to  the  roots  of  things,  to  reconceive  the  Christ, 
to  bring  him  afresh  into  our  lives,  to  make  the  life  so  freely 
given  for  man  minister  again  in  new  ways  to  man's  new  needs. 
Every  great  religion  is,  in  truth,  a  concentration  of  great  ideas, 
capable,  as  all  ideas  are,  of  infinite  expansion  and  adaptation. 
And  woe  to  our  human  weakness  if  it  loose  its  hold  one  instant 
before  it  must  on  any  of  those  rare  and  precious  possessions 
which  have  helped  it  in  the  past,  and  may  again  inspire  it  in 
the  future  ! 

'  To  reconceive  the  Christ  I  It  is  the  special  task  of  our  age, 
though  in  some  sort  and  degree  it  has  been  the  ever-recurring 
task  of  Europe  since  the  beginning.' 

He  paused,  and  then  very  simply,  and  so  as  to  be  understood 
by  those  who  heard  him,  he  gave  a  rapid  sketch  of  that  great 
operation  worked  by  the  best  intellect  of  Europe  during  the 
last  half -century — broadly  speaking — on  the  facts  and  docu- 
ments of  primitive  Christianity.  From  all  sides  and  by  the 
help  of  every  conceivable  instrument  those  facts  have  been 
investigated,  and  now  at  last  the  great  result — '  the  revivified 
reconceived  truth ' — seems  ready  to  emerge  !  Much  may  still 
be  known — much  can  never  be  known  ;  but  if  we  will,  we  may 
now  discern  the  true  features  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  as  no  genera- 
tion but  our  own  has  been  able  to  discern  them,  since  those  who 
had  seen  and  handled  passed  away. 

'  Let  me  try,  however  feebly,  and  draw  it  afresh  for  you,  that 
life  of  lives,  that  story  of  stories,  as  the  labour  of  our  own  age 
in  particular  has  patiently  revealed  it  to  us.  Come  back  with 
me  through  the  centuries  ;  let  us  try  and  see  the  Christ  of  Galilee 
and  the  Christ  of  Jerusalem  as  he  was,  before  a  credulous  love 
and  Jewish  tradition  and  Greek  subtlety  had  at  once  dimmed 
and  glorified  the  truth.  Ah !  do  what  we  will,  it  is  so  scanty 
and  poor,  this  knowledge  of  ours,  compared  with  all  that  we 


CHAP.  XL  NEW  OPENINGS  497 

yearn  to  know — but,  such  as  it  is,  let  me,  very  humbly  and 
very  tentatively,  endeavour  to  put  it  before  you.' 

At  this  point  Flaxman's  attention  was  suddenly  distracted 
by  a  stir  round  the  door  of  entrance  on  his  left  hand.  Looking 
round,  lie  saw  a  Ritualist  priest,  in  cassock  and  cloak,  disputing 
in  hurried  undertones  with  the  men  about  the  door.  At  last 
he  gained  his  point  apparently,  for  the  men,  with  half -angry, 
half -quizzing  looks  at  each  other,  allowed  him  to  come  in,  and 
he  found  a  seat.  Flaxman  was  greatly  struck  by  the  face — by 
its  ascetic  beauty,  the  stern  and  yet  delicate  whiteness  and 
emaciation  of  it.  He  sat  with  both  hands  resting  on  the  stick 
he  held  in  front  of  him,  intently  listening,  the  perspiration  of 
physical  weakness  on  his  brow  and  round  his  finely  curved 
mouth.  Clearly  he  could  hardly  see  the  lecturer,  for  the  room 
had  become  inconveniently  crowded,  and  the  men  about  him 
were  mostly  standing. 

'  One  of  the  St.  Wilfrid's  priests,  I  suppose,'  Flaxman  said  to 
himself.  '  What  on  earth  is  he  doing  dans  cette  galere  ?  Are  we 
to  have  a  disputation  ?  That  would  be  dramatic.' 

He  had  no  attention,  however,  to  spare,  and  the  intruder 
was  promptly  forgotten.  When  he  turned  back  to  the  platform 
he  found  that  Robei*t,  with  Mackay's  help,  had  hung  on  a  screen 
to  his  right,  four  or  five  large  drawings  of  Nazareth,  of  the  Lake 
of  Gennesaret,  of  Jerusalem,  and  the  Temple  of  Herod,  of  the 
ruins  of  that  synagogue  on  the  probable  site  of  Capernaum  in 
which  conceivably  Jesus  may  have  stood.  They  were  bold  and 
striking,  and  filled  the  bare  hall  at  once  with  suggestions  of  the 
East.  He  had  used  them  often  at  Murewell.  Then,  adopting 
a  somewhat  different  tone,  he  plunged  into  the  life  of  Jesus.  He 
brought  to  it  all  his  trained  historical  power,  all  his  story- 
telling faculty,  all  his  sympathy  with  the  needs  of  feeling.  And 
bit  by  bit,  as  the  quick  nervous  sentences  issued  and  struck, 
each  like  the  touch  of  a  chisel,  the  majestic  figure  emerged,  set 
against  its  natural  backgrou  iid,  instinct  with  some  fraction  at 
least  of  the  magic  of  reality,  most  human,  most  persuasive,  most 
tragic.  He  brought  out  the  great  words  of  the  new  faith,  to 
which,  whatever  may  be  their  literal  origin,  Jesus,  and  Jesus 
only,  gave  currency  and  immortal  force.  He  dwelt  on  the 
magic,  the  permanence,  the  expansiveness,  of  the  young  Naza- 
rene's  central  conception — the  spiritualised,  universalised  '  King- 
dom of  God.'  Elsmere's  thought,  indeed,  knew  nothing  of  a 
perfect  man,  as  it  knew  nothing  of  an  incarnate  God  •  he 
shrank  from  nothing  that  he  believed  true ;  but  every  limi- 
tation, every  reserve  he  allowed  himself,  did  but  make  the 
whole  more  poignantly  real,  and  the  claim  of  Jesus  more 
penetrating. 

'The  world  has  grown  since  Jesus  preached  in  Galilee  and 
Judaea.  We  cannot  learn  the  whole  of  God's  lesson  from  him 
now — nay,  we  could  not  then !  But  all  that  is  most  essential 
to  man — all  that  saves  the  soul,  all  that  purifies  the  heart — that 

2  K 


498  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

he  has  still  for  you  and  me,  as  he  had  it  for  the  men  and  women 
of  his  own  time.' 

Then  he  came  to  the  last  scenes.  His  voice  sank  a  little  ;  his 
notes  dropped  from  his  hand  :  and  the  silence  grew  oppressive. 
The  dramatic  force,  the  tender  passionate  insight,  the  fearless 
modernness  with  which  the  story  was  told,  made  it  almost  un- 
bearable. Those  listening  saw  the  trial,  the  streets  of  Jeru- 
salem, that  desolate  place  outside  the  northern  gate  ;  they  were 
spectators  of  the  torture,  they  heard  the  last  cry.  No  one 
present  had  ever  so  seen,  so  heard  before.  Rose  had  hidden  her 
face.  Flaxman  for  the  first  time  forgot  to  watch  the  audience  ; 
the  men  had  forgotten  each  other ;  and  for  the  first  time  that 
night,  in  many  a  cold  embittered  heart,  there  was  born  that 
love  of  the  Son  of  Man  which  Nathaniel  felt,  and  John,  and 
Mary  of  Bethany,  and  which  has  in  it  now,  as  then,  the  promise 
of  the  future. 

' "  He  laid  him  in  a  tomb  which  had  been  hewn  out  of  a  rock, 
and  he  rolled  a  stone  against  the  door  of  the  tomb."  The  ashes 
of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  mingled  with  the  earth  of  Palestine — 

'  "  Far  hence  he  lies 

In  the  lorn  Syrian  town, 
And  on  his  grave,  with  shining  eyes, 
The  Syrian  stars  look  down."  ' 

He  stopped.  The  melancholy  cadence  of  the  verse  died  away. 
Then  a  gleam  broke  over  the  pale  exhausted  face — a  gleam  of 
extraordinary  sweetness. 

'  And  in  the  days  and  weeks  that  followed  the  devout  and 
passionate  fancy  of  a  few  mourning  Galileans  begat  the  exquisite 
fable  of  the  Resurrection.  How  natural — and  amid  all  its  false- 
ness— how  true,  is  that  naive  and  contradictory  story !  The 
rapidity  with  which  it  spread  is  a  measure  of  many  things.  It 
is,  above  all,  a  measure  of  the  greatness  of  Jesus,  of  the  force 
with  which  he  had  drawn  to  himself  the  hearts  and  imagina- 
tions of  men.  .  .  . 

'  And  now,  my  friends,  what  of  all  this  ?  If  these  things  I 
have  been  saying  to  you  are  true,  what  is  the  upshot  of  them 
for  you  and  me  1  Simply  this,  as  I  conceive  it — that  instead  of 
wasting  your  time,  and  degrading  your  souls,  by  indulgence  in 
such  grime  as  this ' — and  he  pointed  to  the  newspapers — '  it  is 
your  urgent  business  and  mine — at  this  moment— to  do  our  very 
utmost  to  bring  this  life  of  Jesus,  our  precious  invaluable 
possession  as  a  people,  back  into  some  real  and  cogent  relation 
with  our  modern  lives  and  beliefs  and  hopes.  Do  not  answer 
me  that  such  an  effort  is  a  mere  dream  and  futility,  conceived 
in  the  vague,  apart  from  reality — that  men  must  have  some- 
thing to  worship,  and  that  if  they  cannot  worship  Jesus  they 
will  not  trouble  to  love  him.  Is  the  world  desolate  with  God 
still  in  it,  and  does  it  rest  merely  with  us  to  love  or  not  to  love  1 
Love  and  revere  something  we  must,  if  we  are  to  be  men  and 


CHAP.  XL  NEW  OPENINGS  499 

not  beasts.  At  all  times  and  in  all  nations,  as  I  have  tried  to 
show  you,  man  has  helped  himself  by  the  constant  and  passionate 
memory  of  those  great  ones  of  his  race  who  have  spoken  to  him 
most  audibly  of  God  and  of  eternal  hope.  And  for  us  Euro- 
peans and  Englishmen,  as  I  have  also  tried  to  show  you,  history 
and  inheritance  have  decided.  If  we  turn  away  from  the  true 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  because  he  has  been  disfigured  and  misre- 
presented by  the  Churches,  we  turn  away  from  that  in  which 
our  weak  wills  and  desponding  souls  are  meant  to  find  their 
most  obvious  and  natural  help  and  inspiration — from  that 
symbol  of  the  Divine,  which,  of  necessity,  means  most  to  us. 
No !  give  him  back  your  hearts — be  ashamed  that  you  have 
ever  forgotten  your  debt  to  him  !  Let  combination  and  brother- 
hood do  for  the  newer  and  simpler  faith  what  they  did  once  for 
the  old — let  them  give  it  a  practical  shape,  a  practical  grip  on 
human  life.  .  .  .  Then  we  too  shall  have  our  Easter ! — we  too 
shall  have  the  right  to  say,  He  is  not  here,  he  is  risen.  Not  here 
— in  legend,  in  miracle,  in  the  beautiful  outworn  forms  and 
crystallisations  of  older  thought.  He  is  risen — in  a  wiser  rever- 
ence and  a  more  reasonable  love;  risen  in  new  forms  of  social  help 
inspired  by  his  memory,  called  afresh  by  his  name  !  Eisen — if 
you  and  your  children  will  it — in  a  church  or  company  of  the 
faithful,  over  the  gates  of  which  two  sayings  of  man  s  past,  into 
which  man's  present  has  breathed  new  meanings,  shall  be 
written : — 

'In  Thee,  0  Eternal,  have  I  put  my  trust : 
and — 

'  This  do  in  remembrance  of  Me. ' 

The  rest  was  soon  over.  The  audience  woke  from  the  trance 
in  which  it  had  been  held  with  a  sudden  burst  of  talk  and 
movement.  In  the  midst  of  it,  and  as  the  majority  of  the 
audience  were  filing  out  into  the  adjoining  rooms,  the  gasfitter's 
tall  companion  Andrews  mounted  the  platform,  while  the  gas- 
fitter  himself,  with  an  impatient  shrug,  pushed  his  way  into  the 
outgoing  crowd.  Andrews  went  slowly  and  deliberately  to 
work,  dealing  out  his  long  cantankerous  sentences  with  a  nasal 
sangfroid  which  seemed  to  change  in  a  moment  the  whole 
aspect  and  temperature  of  things.  He  remarked  that  Mr. 
Elsmere  had  talked  of  what  great  scholars  had  done  to  clear  up 
this  matter  of  Christ  and  Christianity.  Well,  he  was  free  to 
maintain  that  old  Tom  Paine  was  as  good  a  scholar  as  any  of 
'em,  and  most  of  them  in  that  hall  knew  what  lie  thought  about 
it.  Tom  Paine  hadn't  anything  to  say  against  Jesus  Christ, 
and  he  hadn't.  He  was  a  workman  and  a  fine  sort  of  man,  and 
if  he'd  been  alive  now  he'd  have  been  a  Socialist,  '  as  most  of  us 
are,'  and  he'd  have  made  it  hot  for  the  rich  loafers,  and  the 
sweaters,  and  the  middlemen,  '  as  we'd  like  to  make  it  hot  for 
'em.'  But  as  for  those  people  who  got  up  the  Church — Mytho- 
logists  Tom  Paine  called  'em — and  the  miracles,  and  made  an 


500  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

uncommonly  good  thing  out  of  it,  pecuniarily  speaking,  he 
didn't  see  what  they'd  got  to  do  with  keeping  up,  or  mending, 
or  preserving  their  precious  bit  of  work.  The  world  had  found 
'em  out,  and  serve  'em  right. 

And  he  wound  up  with  a  fierce  denunciation  of  priests,  not 
without  a  harsh  savour  and  eloquence,  which  was  much  clapped 
by  the  small  knot  of  workmen  amongst  whom  he  had  been 
standing. 

Then  there  followed  a  Socialist  —  an  eager,  ugly,  black- 
bearded  little  fellow,  who  preached  the  absolute  necessity  of 
doing  without  '  any  cultus  whatsoever,'  threw  scorn  on  both  the 
Christians  and  the  Positivists  for  refusing  so  to  deny  them- 
selves, and  appealed  earnestly  to  his  group  of  hearers  '  to  help 
in  bringing  religion  back  from  heaven  to  earth,  where  it 
belongs.'  Mr.  Elsmere's  new  church,  if  he  ever  got  it,  would 
only  be  a  fresh  instrument  in  the  hands  of  the  bourgeoisie. 
And  when  the  people  had  got  their  rights  and  brought  down 
the  capitalists,  they  were  not  going  to  be  such  fools  as  put  their 
necks  under  the  heel  of  what  were  called  '  the  educated  classes.' 
The  people  who  wrote  the  newspapers  Mr.  Elsmere  objected  to, 
knew  quite  enough  for  the  working-man — and  people  should 
not  be  too  smooth-spoken ;  what  the  working  class  wanted  be- 
yond everything  just  now  was  grit. 

A  few  other  short  speeches  followed,  mostly  of  the  common 
Secularist  type,  in  defence  of  the  newspapers  attacked.  But 
the  defence,  on  the  whole,  was  shuffling  and  curiously  half- 
hearted. Robert,  sitting  by  with  his  head  on  his  hand,  felt  that 
there,  at  any  rate,  his  onslaught  had  told. 

He  said  a  few  words  in  reply,  in  a  low  husky  voice,  without 
a  trace  of  his  former  passion,  and  the  meeting  broke  up.  The 
room  had  quickly  filled  when  it  was  known  that  he  was  up 
again ;  and  as  he  descended  the  steps  of  the  platform,  after 
shaking  hands  with  the  chairman,  the  hundreds  present  broke 
into  a  sudden  burst  of  cheering.  Lady  Charlotte  pressed  for- 
ward to  him  through  the  crowd,  offering  to  take  him  home. 
'  Come  with  us,  Mr.  Elsmere ;  you  look  like  a  ghost.'  But  he 
shook  his  head,  smiling.  '  No,  thank  you,  Lady  Charlotte — I 
must  have  some  air,'  and  he  took  her  out  on  his  arm,  while 
Flaxman  followed  with  Rose. 

It  once  occurred  to  Flaxman  to  look  round  for  the  priest  he 
had  seen  come  in.  But  there  were  no  signs  of  him.  '  I  had  an 
idea  he  would  have  spoken,'  he  thought.  '  Just  as  well,  perhaps. 
We  should  have  had  a  row.' 

Lady  Charlotte  threw  herself  back  in  the  carriage  as  they 
drove  off,  with  a  long  breath,  and  the  inward  reflection,  '  So  his 
wife  wouldn't  come  and  hear  him  !  Must  be  a  woman  with  a 
character  that— a  Strafford  in  petticoats  ! ' 

Robert  turned  up  the  street  to  the  City,  the  tall  slight  figure 


CHAP.  XL  NEW  OPENINGS  501 

seeming  to  shrink  together  as  he  walked.  After  his  passionate 
effort,  indescribable  depression  had  overtaken  him. 

'  Words — words  ! '  he  said  to  himself,  striking  out  his  hands 
in  a  kind  of  feverish  protest,  as  he  strode  along,  against  his  own 
powerlessness,  against  that  weight  of  the  present  and  the  actual 
which  seems  to  the  enthusiast  alternately  light  as  air,  or  heavy 
as  the  mass  of  ./Etna  on  the  breast  of  Enceladus. 

Suddenly,  at  the  corner  of  a  street,  a  man's  figure  in  a  long 
black  robe  stopped  him  and  laid  a  hand  on  his  arm. 

'  Newcome  ! '  cried  Robert,  standing  still. 

'I  was  there,'  said  the  other,  bending  forward  and  looking 
close  into  his  eyes.  '  I  heard  almost  all.  I  went  to  confront,  to 
denounce  you ! ' 

By  the  light  of  a  lamp  not  far  off  Robert  caught  the  attenu- 
ated whiteness  and  sharpness  of  the  well-known  face,  to  which 
weeks  of  fasting  and  mystical  excitement  had  given  a  kind  of 
unearthly  remoteness.  He  gathered  himself  together  with  an 
inward  groan.  He  felt  as  though  there  were  no  force  in  him  at 
that  moment  wherewith  to  meet  reproaches,  to  beat  down 
fanaticism.  The  pressure  on  nerve  and  strength  seemed  un- 
bearable. 

Newcome,  watching  him  with  eagle  eye,  saw  the  sudden 
shrinking  and  hesitation.  He  had  often  in  old  days  felt  the 
same  sense  of  power  over  the  man  who  yet,  in  what  seemed  his 
weakness,  had  always  escaped  him  in  the  end. 

'  I  went  to  denounce,'  he  continued,  in  a  strange  tense  voice, 
'  and  the  Lord  refused  it  to  me.  He  kept  me  watching  for  you 
here.  These  words  are  not  mine  I  speak.  I  waited  patiently 
in  that  room  till  the  Lord  should  deliver  His  enemy  into  my 
hand.  My  wrath  was  hot  against  the  deserter  that  could  not 
even  desert  in  silence — hot  against  his  dupes.  Then  suddenly 
words  came  to  me — they  have  come  to  me  before,  they  burn  up 
the  very  heart  and  marrow  in  me — "  Who  is  he  that  saith,  and  it 
cometh  to  pass,  and  the  Lord  commandeth  it  not  ?  "  There  they 
were  in  my  ears,  written  on  the  walls — the  air ' 

The  hand  dropped  from  Robert's  arm.  A  dull  look  of  defeat, 
of  regret,  darkened  the  gleaming  eyes.  They  were  standing  in 
a  quiet  deserted  street,  but  through  a  side  opening  the  lights, 
the  noise,  the  turbulence  of  the  open-air  market  came  drifting 
to  them  through  the  rainy  atmospnere  which  blurred  and  mag- 
nified everything. 

'  Ay,  after  days  and  nights  in  His  most  blessed  sanctuary ' 
Newcome  resumed  slowly,  'I  came  by  His  commission,  as  I 
thought,  to  fight  His  battle  with  a  traitor !  And  at  the  last 
moment  His  strength,  which  was  in  me,  went  f rom  me.  I  sat 
there  dumb ;  His  hand  was  heavy  upon  me.  His  will  be  done  ! ' 

The  voice  sank  •  the  priest  drew  his  thin  shaking  hand  across 
his  eyes,  as  though  the  awe  of  a  mysterious  struggle  were  still 
upon  him.  Then  he  turned  again  to  Elsmere,  his  face  softening, 
radiating. 


502  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

'  Elsmere,  take  the  sign,  the  message !  I  thought  it  was 
given  to  me  to  declare  the  Lord's  wrath.  Instead,  He  sends 
you  once  more  by  me,  even  now — even  fresh  from  this  new 
defiance  of  His  mercy,  the  tender  offer  of  His  grace  !  He  lies 
at  rest  to-night,  my  brother ' — what  sweetness  in  the  low  vibrat- 
ing tones  ! — '  after  all  the  anguish.  Let  me  draw  you  down  on 
your  knees  beside  Him.  It  is  you,  you,  who  have  helped  to 
drive  in  the  nails,  to  embitter  the  agony  !  It  is  you  who  in  His 
loneliness  have  been  robbing  Him  of  the  souls  that  should  be 
His  !  It  is  you  who  have  been  doing  your  utmost  to  make  His 
Cross  and  Passion  of  no  effect.  Oh,  let  it  break  your  heart  to 
think  of  it !  Watch  by  Him  to-night2  my  friend,  my  brother, 
and  to-morrow  let  the  risen  Lord  reclaim  His  own  ! ' 

Never  had  Robert  seen  any  mortal  face  so  persuasively  beau- 
tiful ;  never  surely  did  saint  or  ascetic  plead  with  a  more  pene- 
trating gentleness.  After  the  storm  of  those  opening  words  the 
change  was  magical.  The  tears  stood  in  Elsmere's  eyes.  But 
his  quick  insight,  in  spite  of  himself,  divined  the  subtle  natural 
facts  behind  the  outburst,  the  strained  physical  state,  the  irrit- 
able brain — all  the  consequences  of  a  long  defiance  of  physical 
and  mental  law.  The  priest  repelled  him,  the  man  drew  him 
like  a  magnet. 

'  What  can  I  say  to  you,  Newcpme  ? '  he  cried  despairingly. 
'  Let  me  say  nothing,  dear  old  friend !  I  am  tired  out ;  so,  I 
expect,  are  you.  I  know  what  this  week  has  been  to  you. 
Walk  with  me  a  little.  Leave  these  great  things  alone.  We 
cannot  agree.  Be  content — God  knows  !  Tell  me  about  the  old 
place  and  the  people.  I  long  for  news  of  them.' 

A  sort  of  shudder  passed  through  his  companion.  Newcorne 
stood  wrestling  with  himself.  It  was  like  the  slow  departure  of 
a  possessing  force.  Then  he  sombrely  assented,  and  they  turned 
towards  the  City.  But  his  answers,  as  Robert  questioned  him, 
were  sharp  and  mechanical,  and  presently  it  became  evident 
that  the  demands  of  the  ordinary  talk  to  which  Elsmere  rigor- 
ously held  him  were  more  than  he  could  bear. 

As  they  reached  St.  Paul's,  towering  into  the  watery  moon- 
light of  the  clouded  sky,  he  stopped  abruptly  and  said  good-night. 

'  You  came  to  me  in  the  spirit  of  war,  said  Robert,  with  some 
emotion,  as  he  held  his  hand  ;  '  give  me  instead  the  grasp  of 
peace ! ' 

The  spell  of  his  manner,  his  presence,  prevailed  at  last.  A 
melancholy  quivering  smile  dawned  on  the  priest's  delicate  lip. 

'  God  bless  you — God  restore  you  ! '  he  said  sadly,  and  was 
gone. 

CHAPTER   XLI 

A  WEEK  later  Elsmere  was  startled  to  find  himself  detained, 
after  his  story-telling,  by  a  trio  of  workmen,  asking  on  behalf 


CHAP.  XLI  NEW  OPENINGS  503 

of  some  thirty  or  forty  members  of  the  North  R Club  that 

he  would  give  them  a  course  of  lectures  on  the  New  Testament. 
One  of  them  was  the  gasfitter  Charles  Richards  :  another  was 
the  watchmaker  Lestrange,  who  had  originally  challenged  Robert 
to  deliver  himself ;  and  the  third  was  a  tough  old  Scotchman  of 
sixty  with  a  philosophical  turn,  under  whose  spoutings  of  Hume 
and  Locke,  of  Reid  and  Dugald  Stewart,  delivered  in  the  shrillest 
of  cracked  voices,  the  Club  had  writhed  many  an  impatient  half- 
hour  on  debating  nights.  He  had  an  unexpected  artistic  gift,  a 
kind  of  '  sport '  as  compared  with  the  rest  of  his  character,  which 
made  him  a  valued  designer  in  the  pottery  works  ;  but  his  real 
interests  were  speculative  and  argumentative,  concerned  with 
'  common  nawtions  and  the  praimary  elements  of  reason,'  and  the 
appearance  of  Robert  in  the  district  seemed  to  offer  him  at  last 
a  foeman  worthy  of  his  steel.  Elsmere  shrewdly  suspected  that 
the  last  two  looked  forward  to  any  teaching  he  might  give 
mostly  as  a  new  and  favourable  exercising  ground  for  their  own 
wits ;  but  he  took  the  risk,  gladly  accepted  the  invitation,  and 
fixed  Sunday  afternoons  for  a  weekly  New  Testament  lecture. 

His  first  lecture,  which  he  prepared  with  great  care,  was  de- 
livered to  thirty-seven  men  a  fortnight  later.  It  was  on  the 
political  and  social  state  of  Palestine  and  the  East  at  the  time  of 
Christ's  birth ;  and  Robert,  who  was  as  fervent  a  believer  in 
'  large  maps '  as  Lord  Salisbury,  had  prepared  a  goodly  store  of 
them  for  the  occasion,  together  with  a  number  of  drawings  and 
photographs  which  formed  part  of  the  collection  he  had  been 
gradually  making  since  his  own  visit  to  the  Holy  Land.  There 
was  nothing  he  laid  more  stress  on  than  these  helps  to  the  eye 
and  imagination  in  dealing  with  the  Bible.  He  was  accustomed 
to  maintain  in  his  arguments  with  Hugh  Flaxman  that  the  or- 
thodox traditional  teaching  of  Christianity  would  become  im- 
possible as  soon  as  it  should  be  the  habit  to  make  a  free  and 
modern  use  of  history  and  geography  and  social  material  in  con- 
nection with  the  Gospels.  Nothing  tends  so  much,  he  would  say. 
to  break  down  the  irrational  barrier  which  men  have  raised 
about  this  particular  tract  of  historical  space,  nothing  helps  so 
much  to  let  in  the  light  and  air  of  scientific  thought  upon  it,  and 
therefore  nothing  prepares  the  way  so  effectively  for  a  series 
of  new  conceptions. 

By  a  kind  of  natural  selection  Richards  became  Elsmere's 
chief  helper  and  adjutant  in  the  Sunday  lectures, — with  regard 
to  all  such  matters  as  beating  up  recruits,  keeping  guard  over 
portfolios,  handing  round  maps  and  photographs,  etc., — sup- 
planting in  this  function  the  jealous  and  sensitive  Mackay,  who, 
after  his  original  opposition,  had  now  arrived  at  regarding 
Robert  as  his  own  particular  property,  and  the  lecturer's  quick 
smile  of  thanks  for  services  rendered  as  his  own  especial  right. 
The  bright,  quicksilvery,  irascible  little  workman,  however,  was 
irresistible  and  had  his  way.  He  had  taken  a  passion  for  Robert 
as  for  a  being  of  another  order  and  another  world.  In  the  dis- 


504  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

cussions  which  generally  followed  the  lecture  he  showed  a  recep- 
tiveness,  an  intelligence,  which  were  in  reality  a  matter  not  of 
the  mind  but  of  the  heart.  He  loved,  therefore  he  understood. 
At  the  club  he  stood  for  Elsmere  with  a  quivering  spasmodic 
eloquence,  as  against  Andrews  and  the  Secularists.  One  thing 
only  puzzled  Robert.  Among  all  the  little  fellow's  sallies  and 
indiscretions,  which  were  not  infrequent,  no  reference  to  his 
home  life  was  ever  included.  Here  he  kept  even  Robert  ab- 
solutely at  arm's  length.  Robert  knew  that  he  was  married  and 
had  children,  nothing  more. 

The  old  Scotchman,  Macdonald,  came  out  after  the  first  lecture 
somewhat  crestfallen. 

'  Not  the  sort  of  stooff  I'd  expected  ! '  he  said,  with  a  shade  of 
perplexity  on  the  rugged  face.  '  He  doosn't  talk  eneuf  in  the 
aobstract  for  me.' 

But  he  went  again,  and  the  second  lecture,  on  the  origin  of 
the  Gospels,  got  hold  of  him,  especially  as  it  supplied  him  with  a 
whole  armoury  of  new  arguments  in  support  of  Hume's  doctrine 
of  conscience,  and  in  defiance  of  'that  blatin'  creetur,  Reid.' 
The  thesis  with  which  Robert,  drawing  on  some  of  the  stores 
supplied  him  by  the  squire's  book,  began  his  account — i.e.  the 
gradual  growth  within  the  limits  of  history  of  man's  capacity 
for  telling  the  exact  truth — fitted  in,  to  the  Scotchman's  think- 
ing, so  providentially  with  his  own  favourite  experimental  doc- 
trines as  against  the  '  intueetion '  folks,  '  who  will  have  it  that  a 
babby's  got  as  moch  mind  as  Mr.  Gladstone,  ef  it  only  knew 
it ! '  that  afterwards  he  never  missed  a  lecture. 

Lestrange  was  more  difficult.  He  had  the  inherited  tempera- 
ment of  the  Genevese  frondeur,  which  made  Geneva  the  head- 
quarters of  Calvinism  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  bids  fair  to 
make  her  the  headquarters  of  continental  radicalism  in  the  nine- 
teenth. Robert  never  felt  his  wits  so  much  stretched  and  sharp- 
ened as  when  after  the  lecture  Lestrange  was  putting  questions 
and  objections  with  an  acrid  subtlety  and  persistence  worthy  of 
a  descendant  of  that  burgher  class  which  first  built  up  the  Cal- 
vinistic  system  and  then  produced  the  destroyer  of  it  in  Rousseau. 
Robert  bore  his  heckling,  however,  with  great  patience  and 
adroitness.  He  had  need  of  all  he  knew,  as  Murray  Edwardes 
had  warned  him.  But  luckily  he.  knew  a  great  deal ;  his  thought 
was  clearing  and  settling  month  by  month,  and  whatever  he 
may  have  lost  at  any  moment  by  the  turn  of  an  argument,  he 
recovered  immediately  afterwards  by  the  force  of  personality, 
and  of  a  single-mindedness  in  which  there  was  never  a  trace  of 
personal  grasping. 

Week  by  week  the  lecture  became  more  absorbing  to  him,  the 
men  more  pliant,  his  hold  on  them  firmer.  His  disinterestedness, 
his  brightness  and  resource,  perhaps,  too,  the  signs  about  him  of 
a  light  and  frail  physical  organisation,  the  novelty  of  his  posi- 
tion, the  inventiveness  of  his  method,  gave  him  little  by  little 
an  immense  power  in  the  place.  After  the  first  two  lectures 


CHAP.  XLI  NEW  OPENINGS  505 

Murray  Edwardes  became  his  constant  and  enthusiastic  hearer 
on  Sunday  afternoons,  and,  catching  some  of  Robert's  ways  and 
spirit,  he  gradually  brought  his  own  chapel  and  teaching  more 
and  more  into  line  with  the  Elgood  Street  undertaking.  So  that 
the  venture  of  the  two  men  began  to  take  ever  larger  propor- 
tions •  and,  kindled  by  the  growing  interest  and  feeling  about 
him,  dreams  began  to  rise  in  Elsmere's  mind  which  as  yet  he 
hardly  dared  to  cherish  ;  which  came  and  went,  however,  weav- 
ing a  substance  for  themselves  out  of  each  successive  incident 
and  effort. 

Meanwhile  he  was  at  work  on  an  average  three  evenings  in 
the  week  besides  the  Sunday.  In  West  End  drawing-rooms  his 
personal  gift  had  begun  to  tell  no  less  than  in  this  crowded, 
squalid  East ;  and  as  his  aims  became  known,  other  men,  find- 
ing the  thoughts  of  their  own  hearts  revealed  in  him,  or  touched 
with  that  social  compunction  which  is  one  of  the  notes  of  our 
time,  came  down  and  became  his  helpers.  Of  all  the  social  pro- 
jects of  which  that  Elgood  Street  room  became  the  centre,  Els- 
mere  was,  in  some  sense,  the  life  and  inspiration.  But  it  was 
not  these  projects  themselves  which  made  this  period  of  his 
life  remarkable.  London  at  the  present  moment,  it  it  be  honey- 
combed with  vice  and  misery,  is  also  honeycombed  with  the 
labour  of  an  ever-expanding  charity.  Week  by  week  men  and 
women  of  like  gifts  and  energies  with  Elsmere  spend  themselves, 
as  he  did,  in  the  constant  effort  to  serve  and  to  alleviate.  What 
was  noticeable,  what  was  remarkable  in  this  work  of  his,  was 
the  spirit,  the  religious  passion  which,  radiating  from  him,  began 
after  a  while,  to  kindle  the  whole  body  of  men  about  him.  It 
was  from  his  Sunday  lectures  and  his  talks  with  the  children, 
boys  and  girls,  who  came  in  after  the  lecture  to  spend  a  happy 
hour  and  a  half  with  him  on  Sunday  afternoons,  that  in  later 
years  hundreds  of  men  and  women  will  date  the  beginnings  of 
a  new  absorbing  life.  There  came  a  time,  indeed,  when,  instead 
of  meeting  criticism  by  argument,  Robert  was  able  simply  to 
point  to  accomplished  facts.  'You  ask  me,'  he  would  say  in 
effect.  '  to  prove  to  you  that  men  can  love,  can  make  a  new  and 
fruitful  use,  for  daily  life  and  conduct,  of  a  merely  human 
Christ.  Go  amongst  our  men,  talk  to  our  children,  and  satisfy 
yourself.  A  little  while  ago  scores  of  these  men  either  hated  the 
very  name  of  Christianity  or  were  entirely  indifferent  to  it.  To 
scores  of  them  now  the  name  of  the  teacher  of  Nazareth,  the 
victim  of  Jerusalem,  is  dear  and  sacred ;  his  life,  his  death,  his 
words,  are  becoming  once  more  a  constant  source  of  moral  effort 
and  spiritual  hope.  See  for  yourself  ! ' 

However,  we  are  anticipating.     Let  us  go  back  to  May. 

One  beautiful  morning  Robert  was  sitting  working  in  his 
study,  his  windows  open  to  the  breezy  blue  sky  and  the  budding 
plane-trees  outside,  when  the  door  was  thrown  open  and  '  Mr. 
Wendover '  was  announced. 

The  squire  entered  ;  but  what  a  shrunken  and  aged  squire  ! 


506  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

The  gait  was  feeble,  the  bearing  had  lost  all  its  old  erectness, 
the  bronzed  strength  of  the  face  had  given  place  to  a  waxen 
and  ominous  pallor.  Robert,  springing  up  with  joy  to  meet  the 
great  gust  of  Murewell  air  which  seemed  to  blow  about  him 
with  the  mention  of  the  squire's  name,  was  struck,  arrested. 
He  guided  his  guest  to  a  chair  with  an  almost  filial  carefulness. 

'  I  don't  believe,  Squire,'  he  exclaimed,  '  you  ought  to  be  doing 
this — wandering  about  London  by  yourself  ! ' 

But  the  squire,  as  silent  and  angular  as  ever  when  anything 
personal  to  himself  was  concerned,  would  take  no  notice  of  the 
implied  anxiety  and  sympathy.  He  grasped  his  umbrella 
between  his  knees  with  a  pair  of  brown  twisted  hands,  and, 
sitting  very  upright,  looked  critically  round  the  room.  Robert, 
studying  the  dwindled  figure,  remembered  with  a  pang  the 
saying  of  another  Oxford  scholar,  a  propos  of  the  death  of  a 
young  man  of  extraordinary  promise,  '  What  learning  has  perished 
with  him  I  How  vain  seems  all  toil  to  acquire  / ' — and  the  words, 
as  they  passed  through  his  mind,  seemed  to  him  to  ring  another 
death-knell. 

But  after  the  first  painful  impression  he  could  not  help 
losing  himself  in  the  pleasure  of  the  familiar  face,  the  Murewell 
associations. 

'  How  is  the  village,  and  the  Institute  ?  And  what  sort  of 
man  is  my  successor — the  man,  I  mean,  who  came  after  Armit- 
stead?' 

'  I  had  him  once  to  dinner,'  said  the  squire  briefly  :  '  he  made 
a  false  quantity,  and  asked  me  to  subscribe  to  the  Church 
Missionary  Society.  I  haven't  seen  him  since.  He  and  the 
village  have  been  at  loggerheads  about  the  Institute,  I  believe. 
He  wanted  to  turn  out  the  dissenters.  Bateson  came  to  me,  and 
we  circumvented  him,  of  course.  But  the  man's  an  ass.  Don't 
talk  of  him  ! ' 

Robert  sighed  a  long  sigh.  Was  all  his  work  undone  ?  It 
wrung  his  heart  to  remember  the  opening  of  the  Institute,  the 
ardour  of  his  boys.  He  asked  a  few  questions  about  individuals, 
but  soon  gave  it  up  as  hopeless.  The  squirexneither  knew  nor 
cared. 

'And  Mrs.  Darcy?' 

'  My  sister  had  tea  in  her  thirtieth  summer-house  last  Sunday,' 
remarked  the  squire  grimly.  '  She  wished  me  to  communicate 
the  fact  to  you  and  Mrs.  Elsmere.  Also,  that  the  worst  novel 
of  the  century  will  be  out  in  a  fortnight,  and  she  trusts  to  you 
to  see  it  well  reviewed  in  all  the  leading  journals.' 

Robert  laughed,  but  it  was  not  very  easy  to  laugh.  There 
was  a  sort  of  ghastly  undercurrent  in  the  squire's  sarcasms  that 
effectually  deprived  them  of  anything  mirthful. 

'  And  your  book  ? ' 

'  Is  in  abeyance.  I  shall  bequeath  you  the  manuscript  in  my 
will,  to  do  what  you  like  with. 

'Squire!' 


CHAP.  XLI  NEW  OPENINGS  507 

'  Quite  true  !  If  you  had  stayed,  I  should  have  finished  it,  I 
suppose.  But  after  a  certain  age  the  toil  of  spinning  cobwebs 
entirely  out  of  his  own  brain  becomes  too  much  for  a  man.' 

It  was  the  first  thing  of  the  sort  that  iron  mouth  had  ever 
said  to  him.  Elsmere  was  painfully  touched. 

'  You  must  not — you  shall  not  give  it  up,'  he  urged.  '  Publish 
the  first  part  alone,  and  ask  me  for  any  help  you  please.'  • 

The  squire  shook  his  head. 

'  Let  it  be.  Your  paper  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  showed 
me  that  the  best  thing  I  can  do  is  to  hand  on  my  materials  to 
you.  Though  I  am  not  sure  that  when  you  have  got  them  you 
will  make  the  best  use  of  them.  You  and  Grey  between  you 
call  yourselves  Liberals,  and  imagine  yourselves  reformers,  and 
all  the  while  you  are  doing  nothing  but  playing  into  the  hands 
of  the  Blacks.  All  this  theistic  philosophy  of  yours  only  means 
so  much  grist  to  their  mill  in  the  end.' 

'They  don't  see  it  in  that  light  themselves,'  said  Robert, 
smiling. 

'No,'  returned  the  squire,  'because  most  men  are  puzzle- 
heads.  Why,'  he  added,  looking  darkly  at  Robert,  while  the 
great  head  fell  forward  on  his  breast  in  the  familiar  Murewell 
attitude,  '  why  can't  you  do  your  work  and  let  the  preaching 
alone  1 ' 

'  Because,'  said  Robert,  '  the  preaching  seems  to  me  my  work. 
There  is  the  great  difference  between  us,  Squire.  You  look 
upon  knowledge  as  an  end  in  itself.  It  may  be  so.  But  to  me 
knowledge  has  always  been  valuable  first  and  foremost  for  its 
bearing  on  life.' 

'Fatal  twist  that,'  returned  the  squire  harshly.  'Yes,  I 
know ;  it  was  always  in  you.  Well,  are  you  happy  ?  does  this 
new  crusade  of  yours  give  you  pleasure  ? ' 

'Happiness,'  replied  Robert,  leaning  against  the  chimney- 
piece  and  speaking  in  a  low  voice,  '  is  always  relative.  No  one 
knows  it  better  than  you.  Life  is  full  of  oppositions.  But  the 
work  takes  my  whole  heart  and  all  my  energies.' 

The  squire  looked  at  him  in  disapproving  silence  for  a  while. 

'  You  will  bury  your  lif e  in  it  miserably,'  he  said  at  last ;  '  it 
will  be  a  toil  of  Sisyphus  leaving  no  trace  behind  it ;  whereas 
such  a  book  as  you  might  write,  if  you  gave  your  lif  e  to  it,  might 
live  and  work,  and  harry  the  enemy  when  you  are  gone.' 

!  Robert  forbore  the  natural  retort. 

The  squire  went  round  his  library,  making  remarks,  with  all 
the  caustic  shrewdness  natural  to  him,  on  the  new  volumes  that 
Robert  had  acquired  since  their  walks  and  talks  together. 

'  The  Germans,'  he  said  at  last,  putting  back  a  book  into  the 
shelves  with  a  new  accent  of  distaste  and  weariness,  '  are  begin- 
ning to  founder  in  the  sea  of  their  own  learning.  Sometimes  I 
think  I  will  read  no  more  German.  It  is  a  nation  of  learned 
fools,  none  of  whom  ever  sees  an  inch  beyond  his  own  pro- 
fessorial nose.' 


508  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

Then  he  stayed  to  luncheon,  and  Catherine,  moved  by  many 
feelings — perhaps  in  subtle  striving  against  her  own  passionate 
sense  of  wrong  at  this  man's  hands — was  kind  to  him,  and  talked 
and  smiled,  indeed,  so  much  that  the  squire  for  the  first  time  in 
his  life  took  individual  notice  of  her,  and  as  he  parted  with 
Elsmere  in  the  hall  made  the  remark  that  Mrs.  Elsmere  seemed 
to  like  London,  to  which  Robert,  busy  in  an  opportune  search 
for  his  guest's  coat,  made  no  reply. 

'  When  are  you  coming  to  Murewell  ? '  the  squire  said  to  him 
abruptly,  as  he  stood  at  the  door  muffled  up  as  though  it  were 
December.  '  There  are  a  good  many  points  in  that  last  article 
you  want  talking  to  about.  Come  next  month  with  Mrs. 
Elsmere.' 

Robert  drew  a  long  breath,  inspired  by  many  feelings. 

'  I  will  come,  but  not  yet.  I  must  get  broken  in  here  more 
thoroughly  first.  Murewell  touches  me  too  deeply,  and  my 
wife.  You  are  going  abroad  in  the  summer,  you  say.  Let  me 
come  to  you  in  the  autumn.' 

The  squire  said  nothing,  and  went  his  way,  leaning  heavily 
on  his  stick,  across  the  square.  Robert  felt  himself  a  brute  to 
let  him  go,  and  almost  ran  after  him. 

That  evening  Robert  was  disquieted  by  the  receipt  of  a  note 
from  a  young  fellow  of  St.  Anselm's,  an  intimate  friend  and 
occasional  secretary  of  Grey.  Grey,  the  writer  said,  had  received 
Robert's  last  letter,  was  deeply  interested  in  his  account  of  his 
work,  and  begged  him  to  write  again.  He  would  have  written, 
but  that  he  was  himself  in  the  doctor's  hands,  suffering  from 
various  ills,  probably  connected  with  an  attack  of  malarial 
fever  which  had  befallen  him  in  Rome  the  year  before. 

Catherine  found  him  poring  over  the  letter,  and,  as  it  seemed 
to  her,  oppressed  by  an  anxiety  out  of  all  proportion  to  the 
news  itself. 

'They  are  not  really  troubled,  I  think,'  she  said,  kneeling 
down  beside  him,  and  laying  her  cheek  against  his.  '  He  will 
soon  get  over  it,  Robert.' 

But,  alas !  this  mood,  the  tender  characteristic  mood  of  the 
old  Catherine,  was  becoming  rarer  and  rarer  with  her.  As  the 
spring  expanded,  as  the  sun  and  the  leaves  came  back,  poor 
Catherines  temper  had  only  grown  more  wintry  and  more 
rigid.  Her  life  was  full  of  moments  of  acute  suffering.  Never, 
for  instance,  did  she  forget  the  evening  of  Robert's  lecture  to 
the  club.  All  the  time  he  was  away  she  had  sat  brooding  by 
herself  in  the  drawing-room,  divining  with  a  bitter  clairvoyance 
*all  that  scene  in  which  he  was  taking  part,  her  being  shaken 
with  a  tempest  of  misery  and  repulsion.  And  together  with 
that  torturing  image  of  a  glaring  room  in  which  her  husband, 
once  Christ's  loyal  minister,  was  employing  all  his  powers  of 
mind  and  speech  to  make  it  easier  for  ignorant  men  to  desert 
and  fight  against  the  Lord  who  bought  them,  there  mingled  a 
hundred  memories  of  her  father  which  were  now  her  constant 


CHAP.  XLI  NEW  OPENINGS  509 

companions.  In  proportion  as  Robert  and  she  became  more 
divided,  her  dead  father  resumed  a  ghostly  hold  upon  her. 
There  were  days  when  she  went  about  rigid  and  silent,  in 
reality  living  altogether  in  the  past,  among  the  gray  farms, 
the  crags,  and  the  stony  ways  of  the  mountains. 

At  such  times  her  mind  would  be  full  of  pictures  of  her 
father's  ministrations — his  talks  with  the  shepherds  on  the  hills, 
with  the  women  at  their  doors,  his  pale  dreamer's  face  beside 
some  wild  deathbed,  shining  with  the  Divine  message,  the 
'visions'  which  to  her  awestruck  childish  sense  would  often 
seem  to  hold  him  in  their  silent  walks  among  the  misty  hills. 

Robert,  taught  by  many  small  indications,  came  to  recognise 
these  states  of  feeling  in  her  with  a  dismal  clearness,  and  to 
shrink  more  and  more  sensitively  while  they  lasted  from  any 
collision  with  her.  He  kept  his  work,  his  friends,  his  engage- 
ments to  himself,  talking  resolutely  of  other  things,  she  trying 
to  do  the  same,  but  with  less  success,  as  her  nature  was  less 
pliant  than  his. 

Then  there  would  come  moments  when  the  inward  pre- 
occupation would  give  way,  and  that  strong  need  of  loving,  which 
was,  after  all,  the  basis  of  Catherine's  character,  would  break 
hungrily  through,  and  the  wife  of  their  early  married  days 
would  reappear,  though  still  only  with  limitations.  A  certain 
nervous  physical  dread  of  any  approach  to  a  particular  range 
of  subjects  with  her  husband  was  always  present  in  her.  Nay, 
through  all  these  months  it  gradually  increased  in  morbid 
strength.  Shock  had  produced  it :  perhaps  shock  alone  could 
loosen  the  stifling  pressure  of  it.  But  still  every  now  and  then 
her  mood  was  brighter,  more  caressing,  and  the  area  of  common 
mundane  interests  seemed  suddenly  to  broaden  for  them. 

Robert  did  not  always  make  a  wise  use  of  these  happier 
times ;  he  was  incessantly  possessed  with  his  old  idea  that  if 
she  only  would  allow  herself  some  very  ordinary  intercourse 
with  his  world,  her  mood  would  become  less  strained,  his  occu- 
pations and  his  friends  would  cease  to  be  such  bugbears  to  her, 
and,  for  his  comfort  and  hers,  she  might  ultimately  be  able  to 
sympathise  with  certain  sides  at  any  rate  of  his  work. 

So  again  and  again,  when  her  manner  no  longer  threw  him 
back  on  himself,  he  made  efforts  and  experiments.  But  he 
managed  them  far  less  cleverly  than  he  would  have  managed 
anybody  else's  affairs,  as  generally  happens.  For  instance,  at 
a  period  when  he  was  feeling  more  enthusiasm  than  usual  for 
his  colleague  Wardlaw,  and  when  Catherine  was  more  accessible 
than  usual,  it  suddenly  occurred  to  him  to  make  an  effort  to 
bring  them  together.  Brought  face  to  face,  each  must  recognise 
the  nobleness  of  the  other.  He  felt  boyishly  confident  of  it. 
So  he  made  it  a  point,  tenderly  but  insistently,  that  Catherine 
should  ask  Wardlaw  and  his  wife  to  come  and  see  them.  And 
Catherine,  driven  obscurely  by  a  longing  to  yield  in  something, 
which  recurred,  and  often  terrified  herself,  yielded  in  this. 


510  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

The  Wardlaws,  who  in  general  never  went  into  society,  were 
asked  to  a  quiet  dinner  in  Bedford  Square,  and  came.  Then, 
of  course,  it  appeared  that  Robert,  with  the  idealist's  blindness, 
had  forgotten  a  hundred  small  differences  of  temperament  and 
training  which  must  make  it  impossible  for  Catherine,  in  a 
state  of  tension,  to  see  the  hero  in  James  Wardlaw.  It  was  an 
unlucky  dinner.  James  Wardlaw,  with  all  his  heroisms  and 
virtues,  had  long  ago  dropped  most  of  those  delicate  intuitions 
and  divinations,  which  make  the  charm  of  life  in  society,  along 
the  rough  paths  of  a  strenuous  philanthropy.  He  had  no  tact, 
and,  like  most  saints,  he  drew  a  certain  amount  of  inspiration 
from  a  contented  ignorance  of  his  neighbour's  point  of  view. 
Also,  he  was  not  a  man  who  made  much  of  women,  and  he  held 
strong  views  as  to  the  subordination  of  wives.  It  never  occurred 
to  him  that  Robert  might  have  a  Dissenter  in  his  own  house- 
hold, and  as,  in  spite  of  their  speculative  differences,  he  had 
always  been  accustomed,  to  talk  freely  with  Robert,  he  now 
talked  freely  to  Robert  plus  his  wife,  assuming,  as  every  good 
Comtist  does,  that  the  husband  is  the  wife's  pope. 

Moreover,  a  solitary  eccentric  life,  far  from  the  society  of  his 
equals,  had  developed  in  him  a  good  many  crude  Jacobinisms. 
His  experience  of  London  clergymen,  for  instance,  had  not  been 
particularly  favourable,  and  he  had  a  store  of  anecdotes  on  the 
subject  which  Robert  had  heard  before,  but  which  now,  repeated 
in  Catherine's  presence,  seemed  to  have  lost  every  shred  of 
humour  they  once  possessed.  Poor  Elsmere  tried  with  all  his 
might  to  divert  the  stream,  but  it  showed  a  tormenting  ten- 
dency to  recur  to  the  same  channel.  And  meanwhile  the  little 
spectacled  wife,  dressed  in  a  high  home-made  cashmere,  sat 
looking  at  her  husband  with  a  benevolent  and  smiling  admira- 
tion. She  kept  all  her  eloquence  for  the  poor. 

After  dinner  things  grew  worse.  Mrs.  Wardlaw  had  recently 
presented  her  husband  with  a  third  infant,  and  the  ardent  pair 
had  taken  advantage  of  the  visit  to  London  of  an  eminent 
French  Comtist  to  have  it  baptized  with  full  Comtist  rites. 
Wardlaw  stood  astride  on  the  rug,  giving  the  assembled  com- 
pany a  minute  account  of  the  ceremony  observed,  while  his 
wife  threw  in  gentle  explanatory  interjections.  The  manner 
of  both  showed  a  certain  exasperating  confidence,  if  not  in  the 
active  sympathy,  at  least  in  the  impartial  curiosity  of  their 
audience,  and  in  the  importance  to  modern  religious  history  of 
the  incident  itself.  Catherine's  silence  grew  deeper  and  deeper  ; 
the  conversation  fell  entirely  to  Robert.  _  At  last  Robert,  by 
main  force,  as  it  were,  got  Wardlaw  off  into  politics,  but  the 
new  Irish  Coercion  Bill  was  hardly  introduced  before  the  irre- 
pressible being  turned  to  Catherine,  and  said  to  her  with  smiling 
obtuseness — 

'  I  don't  believe  I've  seen  you  at  one  of  your  husband's  Sunday 
addresses  yet,  Mrs.  Elsmere  ?  And  it  isn't  so  far  from  this  part 
of  the  world  either.' 


CHAP.  XLII  NEW  OPENINGS  511 

Catherine  slowly  raised  her  beautiful  large  eyes  upon  him. 
Robert,  looking  at  her  with  a  qualm,  saw  an  expression  he  was 
learning  to  dread  flash  across  the  face. 

'  I  have  my  Sunday  school  at  that  time,  Mr.  Wardlaw.  I  am 
a  Churchwoman.' 

The  tone  had  a  touch  of  hauteur  Robert  had  hardly  ever 
heard  from  his  wife  before.  It  effectually  stopped  all  further 
conversation.  Wardlaw  fell  into  silence,  reflecting  that  he  had 
been  a  fool.  His  wife,  with  a  timid  flush,  drew  out  her  knitting, 
and  stuck  to  it  for  the  twenty  minutes  that  remained.  Catherine 
immediately  did  her  best  to  talk,  to  be  pleasant ;  but  the  dis- 
comfort of  the  little  party  was  too  great.  It  broke  up  at  ten, 
and  the  Wardlaws  departed. 

Catherine  stood  on  the  rug  while  Elsmere  went  with  his 
guests  to  the  door,  waiting  restlessly  for  her  husband's  return. 
Robert,  however,  came  back  to  her,  tired,  wounded,  and  out  of 
spirits,  feeling  that  the  attempt  had  been  wholly  unsuccessful, 
and  shrinking  from  any  further  talk  about  it.  He  at  once  sat 
down  to  some  letters  for  the  late  post.  Catherine  lingered  a 
little,  watching  him,  longing  miserably,  like  any  girl  of  eighteen, 
to  throw  herself  on  his  neck  and  reproach  him  for  their  unhap- 
piness,  his  friends — she  knew  not  what !  He  all  the  time  was 
intimately  conscious  of  her  presence,  of  her  pale  beauty,  which 
now  at  twenty-nine,  in  spite  of  its  severity,  had  a  subtler  finish 
and  attraction  than  ever,  of  the  restless  little  movements  so 
unlike  herself,  which  she  made  from  time  to  time.  But  neither 
spoke  except  upon  indifferent  things.  Once  more  the  difficult 
conditions  of  their  lives  seemed  too  obvious,  too  oppressive. 
Both  were  ultimately  conquered  by  the  same  sore  impulse  to 
let  speech  alone. 


CHAPTER  XLII 

AND  after  this  little  scene,  through  the  busy  exciting  weeks  of 
the  season  which  followed,  Robert,  taxed  to  the  utmost  on  all 
sides,  yielded  to  the  impulse  of  silence  more  and  more. 

Society  was  another  difficulty  between  them.  Robert  de- 
lighted in  it  so  far  as  his  East  End  life  allowed  him  to  have  it. 
No  one  was  ever  more  ready  to  take  other  men  and  women  at 
their  own  valuation  than  he.  Nothing  was  so  easy  to  him  as  to 
believe  in  other  people's  goodness,  or  cleverness,  or  superhuman 
achievement.  On  the  other  hand,  London  is  kind  to  such  men 
as  Robert  Elsmere.  His  talk,  his  writing,  were  becoming 
known  and  relished  ;  and  even  the  most  rigid  of  the  old  school 
found  it  difficult  to  be  angry  with  him.  His  knowledge  of  the 
poor  and  of  social  questions  attracted  the  men  of  actions  ;  his 
growing  historical  reputation  drew  the  attention  of  the  men  of 
thought.  Most  people  wished  to  know  him  and  to  talk  to  him, 


512  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

and  Catherine,  smiled  upon  for  his  sake,  and  assumed  to  be  his 
chief  disciple,  felt  herself  more  and  more  bewildered  and 
antagonistic  as  the  season  rushed  on. 

For  what  pleasure  could  she  get  out  of  these  dinners  and 
these  evenings,  which  supplied  Robert  with  so  much  intellectual 
stimulus  ?  With  her  all  the  moral  nerves  were  jarring  and  out 
of  tune.  At  any  time  Richard  Leyburn's  daughter  would  have 
found  it  hard  to  tolerate  a  society  where  everything  is  an  open 
question  and  all  confessions  of  faith  are  more  or  less  bad  taste. 
But  now,  when  there  was  no  refuge  to  fall  back  upon  in  Robert's 
arms,  no  certainty  of  his  sympathy — nay,  a  certainty  that, 
however  tender  and  pitiful  he  might  be,  he  would  still  think 
her  wrong  and  mistaken  !  She  went  here  and  there  obediently 
because  he  wished ;  but  her  youth  seemed  to  be  ebbing,  the 
old  Murewell  gaiety  entirely  left  her,  and  people  in  general 
wondered  why  Elsmere  should  have  married  a  wife  older  than 
himself,  and  apparently  so  unsuited  to  him  in  temperament. 

Especially  was  she  tried  at  Madame  de  Netteville's.  For 
Robert's  sake  she  tried  for  a  time  to  put  aside  her  first  im- 
pression and  to  bear  Madame  de  Netteville's  evenings — little 
dreaming,  poor  thing,  all  the  time  that  Madame  de  Netteville 
thought  her  presence  at  the  famous  '  Fridays '  an  incubus  only 
to  be  put  up  with  because  the  husband  was  becoming  socially 
an  indispensable. 

But  after  two  or  three  Fridays  Catherine's  endurance  failed 
her.  On  the  last  occasion  she  found  herself  late  in  the  evening 
hemmed  in  behind  Madame  de  Netteville  and  a  distinguished 
African  explorer,  who  was  the  lion  of  the  evening.  Eugenie  de 
Netteville  had  forgotten  her  silent  neighbour,  and  presently, 
with  some  biting  little  phrase  or  other,  she  asked  the  great  man 
his  opinion  on  a  burning  topic  of  the  day,  the  results  of  Church 
Missions  in  Africa.  The  great  man  laughed,  shrugged  his 
shoulders,  and  ran  lightly  through  a  string  of  stories  in  which 
both  missionaries  and  converts  played  parts  which  were  either 
grotesque  or  worse.  Madame  de  Netteville  thought  the  stories 
amusing,  and  as  one  ceased  she  provoked  another,  her  black 
eyes  full  of  a  dry  laughter,  her  white  hand  lazily  plying  her 
great  ostrich  fan. 

Suddenly  a  figure  rose  behind  them. 

'  Oh,  Mrs.  Elsmere ! '  said  Madame  de  Netteville,  starting, 
and  then  coolly  recovering  herself,  'I  had  no  idea  you  were 
there  all  alone.  I  am  afraid  our  conversation  has  been  disagree- 
able to  you.  I  am  afraid  you  are  a  friend  of  missions  ! ' 

And  her  glance,  turning  from  Catherine  to  her  companion, 
made  a  little  malicious  signal  to  him  which  only  he  detected,  as 
though  bidding  him  take  note  of  a  curiosity. 

'  Yes,  I  care  for  them,  I  wish  for  their  success,'  said  Catherine, 
one  hand,  which  trembled  slightly,  resting  on  the  table  beside 
her,  her  great  gray  eyes  fixed  on  Madame  de  Netteville.  '  No 
Christian  has  any  right  to  do  otherwise.' 


CHAP.  XLII  NEW  OPENINGS  513 

Poor  brave  goaded  soul !  She  had  a  vague  idea  of  '  bearing 
testimony'  as  her  father  would  have  borne  it  in  like  circum- 
stances. But  she  turned  very  pale.  Even  to  her  the  word 
'  Christian '  sounded  like  a  bombshell  in  that  room.  The  great 
traveller  looked  up  astounded.  He  saw  a  tall  woman  in  white 
with  a  beautiful  head,  a  delicate  face,  a  something  indescribably 
noble  and  unusual  in  her  whole  look  and  attitude.  She  looked 
like  a  Quaker  prophetess — like  Dinah  Morris  in  society — like — 
but  his  comparisons  failed  him.  How  did  such  a  being  come 
there  ?  He  was  amazed ;  but  he  was  a  man  of  taste,  and 
Madame  de  Netteville  caught  a  certain  aesthetic  approbation 
in  his  look. 

She  rose,  her  expression  hard  and  bright  as  usual. 

'May  one  Christian  pronounce  for  all?'  she  said  with  a 
scornful  affectation  of  meekness.  'Mrs.  Elsmere,  please  find 
some  chair  more  comfortable  than  that  ottoman ;  and  Mr. 
Ansdale,  will  you  come  and  be  introduced  to  Lady  Aubrey  ? ' 

After  her  guests  had  gone  Madame  de  Netteville  came  back 
to  the  fire  flushed  and  frowning.  It  seemed  to  her  that  in  that 
strange  little  encounter  she  had  suffered,  and  she  never  forgot 
or  forgave  the  smallest  social  discomfiture. 

'  Can  I  put  up  with  that  again  ? '  she  asked  herself  with  a 
contemptuous  hardening  of  the  lip.  'I  suppose  I  must  if  he 
cannot  be  got  without  her.  But  1  have  an  instinct  that  it  is 
over — that  she  will  not  appear  here  again.  Daudet  might  make 
use  of  her  I  can't.  What  a  specimen  !  A  boy  and  girl  match, 
I  suppose.  What  else  could  have  induced  that  poor  wretch  to 
cut  his  throat  in  such  fashion  ?  He,  of  all  men  ! ' 

And  Eugenie  de  Netteville  stood  thinking — not,  apparently, 
of  the  puritanical  wife;  the  dangerous  softness  which  over- 
spread the  face  could  have  had  no  connection  with  Catherine. 

Madame  de  Netteville's  instinct  was  just.  Catherine  Elsmere 
never  appeared  again  in  her  drawing-room. 

But,  with  a  little  sad  confession  of  her  own  invincible 
distaste,  the  wife  pressed  the  husband  to  go  without  her.  She 
urged  it  at  a  bitter  moment,  when  it  was  clear  to  her  that  their 
lives  must  of  necessity,  even  in  outward  matters,  be  more 
separate  than  before.  Elsmere  resisted  for  a  time ;  then,  lured 
one  evening  towards  the  end  of  February  by  the  prospect 
conveyed  in  a  note  from  Madame  de  Netteville,  wherein 
Catherine  was  mentioned  in  the  most  scrupulously  civil  terms, 
of  meeting  one  of  the  most  eminent  of  French  critics,  he  went, 
and  thenceforward  went  often.  He  had,  so  far,  no  particular 
liking  for  the  hostess  ;  he  hated  some  of  her  habitues  ;  but  there 
was  no  doubt  that  in  some  ways  she  made  an  admirable  holder 
of  a  salon,  and  that  round  about  her  there  was  a  subtle  mixture 
of  elements,  a  liberty  of  discussion  and  comment,  to  be  found 
nowhere  else.  And  how  bracing  and  refreshing  was  that  free 
play  of  equal  mind  to  the  man  weary  sometimes  of  his  leader's 
rdle  and  weary  of  himself  ! 

2L 


514  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vr 

As  to  the  woman,  his  social  naivete,  which  was  extraordinary, 
but  in  a  man  of  his  type  most  natural,  made  him  accept  her 
exactly  as  he  found  her.  If  there  were  two  or  three  people  in 
Paris  or  London  who  knew  or  suspected  incidents  of  Madame 
de  Netteville's  young  married  days  which  made  her  reception 
at  some  of  the  strictest  English  houses  a  matter  of  cynical 
amusement  to  them,  not  the  remotest  inkling  of  their  know- 
ledge was  ever  likely  to  reach  Elsmere.  He  was  not  a  man 
who  attracted  scandals.  Nor  was  it  anybody's  interest  to 
spread  them.  Madame  de  Netteville's  position  in  London 
society  was  obviously  excellent.  If  she  had  peculiarities  of 
manner  and  speech  they  were  easily  supposed  to  be  French. 
Meanwhile  she  was  undeniably  rich  and  distinguished,  and 
gifted  with  a  most  remarkable  power  of  protecting  herself  and 
her  neighbours  from  boredom.  At  the  same  time,  though 
Elsmere  was,  in  truth,  more  interested  in  her  friends  than  in 
her,  he  could  not  possibly  be  insensible  to  the  consideration 
shown  for  him  in  her  drawing-room.  Madame  de  Netteville 
allowed  herself  plenty  of  jests  with  her  intimates  as  to  the 

Eaung  reformer's  social  simplicity,  his  dreams,  his  optimisms, 
ut  those  intimates  were  the  first  to  notice  that  as  soon  as  he 
entered  the  room  those  optimisms  of  his  were  adroitly  respected. 
She  had  various  delicate  contrivances  for  giving  him  the  lead ; 
she  exercised  a  kind  of  surveillance  over  the  topics  introduced  ; 
or  in  conversation  with  him  she  would  play  that  most  seductive 
part  of  the  cynic  shamed  out  of  cynicism  by  the  neighbourhood 
of  the  enthusiast. 

Presently  she  began  to  claim  a  practical  interest  in  his 
Elgood  Street  work.  Her  offers  were  made  with  a  curious 
mixture  of  sympathy  and  mockery.  Elsmere  could  not  take 
her  seriously.  But  neither  could  he  refuse  to  accept  her  money, 
if  she  chose  to  spend  it  on  a  library  for  Elgood  Street,  or  to 
consult  with  her  about  the  choice  of  books.  This  whim  of  hers 
created  a  certain  friendly  bond  between  them  which  was  not 
present  before.  And  on  Elsmere's  side  it  was  strengthened 
when,  one  evening,  in  a  corner  of  her  inner  drawing-room, 
Madame  de  Netteville  suddenly,  but  very  quietly,  told  him  the 
story  of  her  life — her  English  youth,  her  elderly  French  husband, 
the  death  of  her  only  child,  and  her  flight  as  a  young  widow  to 
England  during  the  war  of  1870.  She  told  the  story  of  the 
child,  as  it  seemed  to  Elsmere,  with  a  deliberate  avoidance  of 
emotion,  nay,  even  with  a  certain  hardness.  But  it  touched 
him  profoundly.  And  everything  else  that  she  said,  though  she 
professed  no  great  regret  for  her  husband,  or  for  the  break-up 
of  her  French  life,  and  though  everything  was  reticent  and 
measured,  deepened  the  impression  of  a  real  forlornness  behind 
all  the  outward  brilliance  and  social  importance.  He  began  to 
feel  a  deep  and  kindly  pity  for  her,  coupled  with  an  earnest 
wish  that  he  could  help  her  to  make  her  life  more  adequate  and 
satisfying.  And  all  this  he  showed  in  the  look  of  his  frank  gray 


CHAP.  XLII  NEW  OPENINGS  515 

eyes,  in  the  cordial  grasp  of  the  hand  with  which  he  said  good- 
bye to  her. 

Madame  de  Netteville's  gaze  followed  him  out  of  the  room— 
the  tall  boyish  figure,  the  nobly  carried  head.  The  riddle  of 
her  flushed  cheek  and  sparkling  eye  was  hard  to  read.  But 
there  were  one  or  two  persons  living  who  could  have  read  it, 
and  who  could  have  warned  you  that  the  true  story  of  Eugenie 
de  Netteville's  life  was  written,  not  in  her  literary  studies  or 
her  social  triumphs,  but  in  various  recurrent  outbreaks  of  un- 
bridled impulse — the  secret,  and  in  one  or  two  cases  the  shame- 
ful landmarks  of  her  past.  And,  as  persons  of  experience,  they 
could  also  have  warned  you  that  the  cold  intriguer,  always  mis- 
tress of  herself,  only  exists  in  fiction,  and  that  a  certain  poisoned 
and  fevered  interest  in  the  religious  leader,  the  young  and  pious 
priest,  as  such,  is  common  enough  among  the  corrupter  women 
of  all  societies. 

Towards  the  end  of  May  she  asked  Elsmere  to  dine  '  en  petit 
comit^,  a  gentlemen's  dinner — except  for  my  cousin,  Lady  Aubrey 
WillerV — to  meet  an  eminent  Liberal  Catholic,  a  friend  of 
Montalembert's  youth. 

It  was  a  week  or  two  after  the  failure  of  the  Wardlaw  ex- 
periment. Do  what  each  would,  the  sore  silence  between  the 
husband  and  wife  was  growing,  was  swallowing  up  more  of  life. 

'  Shall  I  go,  Catherine  ? '  he  asked,  handing  her  the  note. 

'It  would  interest  you,'  she  said  gently,  giving  it  back  to 
him  scrupulously,  as  though  she  had  nothing  to  do  with  it. 

He  knelt  down  before  her,  and  put  his  arms  round  her,  look- 
ing at  her  with  eyes  which  had  a  dumb  and  yet  fiery  appeal 
written  in  them.  His  heart  was  hungry  for  that  old  clinging 
dependence,  that  willing  weakness  of  love,  her  youth  had 
yielded  him  so  gladly,  instead  of  this  silent  strength  of  anta- 
gonism. The  memory  of  her  Murewell  self  flashed  miserably 
through  him  as  he  knelt  there,  of  her  delicate  penitence  towards 
him  after  her  first  sight  of  Newcome,  of  their  night  walks  dur- 
ing the  Mile  End  epidemic.  Did  he  hold  now  in  his  arms  only 
the  ghost  and  shadow  of  that  Murewell  Catherine  ? 

She  must  have  read  the  reproach,  the  yearning  of  his  look, 
for  she  gave  a  little  shiver,  as  though  bracing  herself  with  a 
kind  of  agony  to  resist. 

'  Let  me  go,  Robert ! '  she  said  gently,  kissing  him  on  the 
forehead  and  drawing  back.  '  I  hear  Mary  calling,  and  nurse 
is  out.' 

The  days  went  on  and  the  date  of  Madame  de  Netteville's 
dinner-party  had  come  round.  About  seven  o'clock  that  even- 
ing Catherine  sat  with  the  child  in  the  drawing-room,  expect- 
ing Robert.  He  had  gone  off  early  in  the  afternoon  to  the  East 
End  with  Hugh  Flaxman  to  take  part  in  a  committee  of  work- 
men organised  for  the  establishment  of  a  choral  union  in  R , 

the  scheme  of  which  had  been  Flaxman's  chief  contribution  so 
far  to  the  Elgood  Street  undertaking. 


516  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

It  seemed  to  her  as  she  sat  there  working,  the  windows  open 
on  to  the  bit  of  garden,  where  the  trees  were  already  withered 
and  begrimed,  that  the  air  without  and  her  heart  within  were 
alike  stifling  and  heavy  with  storm.  Something  must  put  an 
end  to  this  oppression,  this  misery  !  She  did  not  know  herself. 
Her  whole  inner  being  seemed  to  her  lessened  and  degraded  by 
this  silent  struggle,  this  fever  of  the  soul,  which  made  impos- 
sible all  those  serenities  and  sweetnesses  of  thought  in  which 
her  nature  had  always  lived  of  old.  The  fight  into  which  fate 
had  forced  her  was  destroying  her.  She  was  drooping  like  a 
plant  cut  off  from  all  that  nourishes  its  life. 

And  yet  she  never  conceived  it  possible  that  she  should  re- 
linquish that  fight.  Nay,  at  times  there  sprang  up  in  her  now 
a  dangerous  and  despairing  foresight  of  even  worse  things  in 
store.  In  the  middle  of  her  suffering  she  already  began  to  feel 
at  moments  the  ascetic's  terrible  sense  of  compensation.  What, 
after  all,  is  the  Christian  life  but  warfare  ?  '  /  came  not  to  send 
peace,  but  a  sword  1 ' 

Yes,  in  these  June  days  Elsmere's  happiness  was  perhaps 
nearer  wreck  than  it  had  ever  been.  All  strong  natures  grow 
restless  under  such  a  pressure  as  was  now  weighing  on  Cathe- 
rine. Shock  and  outburst  become  inevitable. 

So  she  sat  alone  this  hot  afternoon,  haunted  by  presenti- 
ments, by  vague  terror  for  herself  and  him ;  while  the  child 
tottered  about  her,  cooing,  shouting,  kissing,  and  all  impul- 
sively, with  a  ceaseless  energy,  like  her  father. 

The  outer  door  opened,  and  she  heard  Robert's  step,  and 
apparently  Mr.  Flaxman's  also.  There  was  a  hurried  subdued 
word  or  two  in  the  hall,  and  the  two  entered  the  room  where 
she  was  sitting. 

Robert  came,  pressing  back  the  hair  from  his  eyes  with  a 
gesture  which  with  him  was  the  invariable  accompaniment  of 
mental  trouble.  Catherine  sprang  up. 

'  Robert,  you  look  so  tired  !  and  how  late  you  are  ! '  Then  as 
she  came  nearer  to  him  :  '  And  vour  coat — torn — blood  / ' 

'There  is  nothing  wrong  with  me,  dear,'  he  said  hastily, 
taking  her  hands — '  nothing  !  But  it  has  been  an  awful  after- 
noon. Flaxman  will  tell  you.  I  must  go  to  this  place,  I  sup- 
pose, though  I  hate  the  thought  of  it !  Flaxman,  will  you  tell 
her  all  about  it  ? '  And,  loosing  his  hold,  he  went  heavily  out 
of  the  room  and  upstairs. 

'  It  has  been  an  accident,'  said  Flaxman  gently,  coming  for- 
ward, '  to  one  of  the  men  of  his  class.  May  we  sit  down,  Mrs. 
Elsmere  ?  Your  husband  and  I  have  gone  through  a  good  deal 
these  last  two  hours.' 

He  sat  down  with  a  long  breath,  evidently  trying  to  regain 
his  ordinary  even  manner.  His  clothes,  too,  were  covered  with 
dust,  and  his  hand  shook.  Catherine  stood  before  him  in  con- 
sternation, while  a  nurse  came  for  the  child. 

'We  had  just  begun  our  committee  at  four  o'clock,'  he  said 


CHAP.  XMI  NEW  OPENINGS  617 

at  last,  '  though  only  about  half  of  the  men  had  arrived,  when 
there  was  a  great  shouting  and  commotion  outside,  and  a  man 
rushed  in  calling  for  Elsmere.  We  ran  out,  found  a  great 
crowd,  a  huge  brewer's  dray  standing  in  the  street,  and  a  man 
run  over.  Your  husband  pushed  his  way  in.  I  followed,  and, 
to  my  horror,  I  found  him  kneeling  by — Charles  Richards  ! ' 

'  Charles  Richards  ? '  Catherine  repeated  vacantly. 

Flaxman  looked  up  at  her,  as  though  puzzled ;  then  a  flash 
of  astonishment  passed  over  his  face. 

'Elsmere  has  never  told  you  of  Charles  Richards,  the  little 
gasfitter,  who  has  been  his  right  hand  for  the  past  three 
months  1 ' 

'No — never,'  she  said  slowly. 

Again  he  looked  astonished ;  then  he  went  on  sadly :  '  All 
this  spring  he  has  been  your  husband's  shadow — I  never  saw 
such  devotion.  We  found  him  lying  in  the  middle  of  the  road. 
He  had  only  just  left  work,  a  man  said  who  had  been  with  him, 
and  was  running  to  the  meeting.  He  slipped  and  fell,  crossing 
the  street,  which  was  muddy  from  last  night's  rain.  The  dray 
swung  round  the  corner — the  driver  was  drunk  or  careless — 
and  they  went  right  over  him.  One  foot  was  a  sickening  sight. 
Your  husband  and  I  luckily  knew  how  to  lift  him  for  the  best. 
We  sent  off  for  doctors.  His  home  was  in  the  next  street,  as  it 
happened — nearer  than  any  hospital :  so  we  carried  him  there. 
The  neighbours  were  round  the  door. 

Then  he  stopped  himself. 

'  Shall  I  tell  you  the  whole  story  ? '  he  said  kindly ;  '  it  has 
been  a  tragedy !  I  won't  give  you  details  if  you  had  rather 
not.' 

'  Oh  no  ! '  she  said  hurriedly  ;  '  no — tell  me.' 

And  she  forgot  to  feel  any  wonder  that  Flaxman,  in  his 
chivalry,  should  treat  her  as  though  she  were  a  girl  with 
nerves. 

'  Well,  it  was  the  surroundings  that  were  so  ghastly.  When 
we  got  to  the  house  an  old  woman  rushed  at  me — "  His  wife's 
in  there,  but  ye'll  not  find  her  in  her  senses  ;  she's  been  at  it 
from  eight  o'clock  this  morning.  We've  took  the  children 
away."  I  didn't  know  what  she  meant  exactly  till  we  got 
into  the  little  front  room.  There,  such  a  spectacle  !  A  young 
woman  on  a  chair  by  the  fire  sleeping  heavily,  dead  drunk ;  the 
breakfast  things  on  the  table,  the  sun  blazing  in  on  the  dust 
and  the  dirt,  and  on  the  woman's  face.  I  wanted  to  carry  him 
into  the  room  on  the  other  side — he  was  unconscious ;  but  a 
doctor  had  come  up  with  us,  and  made  us  put  him  down  on  a 
bed  there  was  in  the  corner.  Then  we  got  some  brandy  and 
poured  it  down.  The  doctor  examined  him,  looked  at  his  foot, 
threw  something  over  it.  "  Nothing  to  be  done,"  he  said — "  in- 
ternal injuries — he  can't  live  half  an  hour."  The  next  minute 
the  poor  fellow  opened  his  eyes.  They  had  pulled  away  the  bed 
from  the  wall.  Your  husband  was  on  the  farther  side,  kneel- 


518  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

ing.  When  he  opened  his  eyes,  clearly  the  first  thing  he  saw 
was  his  wife.  He  half  sprang  up — Elsmere  caught  him — and 
gave  a  horrible  cry — indescribably  horrible.  "  At  it  again,  at 
tt  again!  My  God!"  Then  he  fell  back  fainting.  They  got 
the  wife  out  of  the  room  between  them — a  perfect  log — you 
could  hear  her  heavy  breathing  from  the  kitchen  opposite.  We 
gave  him  more  brandy  and  he  came  to  again.  He  looked  up  in 
your  husband's  face.  "  She  hasn't  broke  out  for  two  months," 
he  said,  so  piteously,  "two  months — and  now — I'm  done — I'm 
done — and  she'll  just  go  straight  to  the  devil !  "  And  it  comes 
out,  so  the  neighbours  told  us,  that  for  two  years  or  more  he 
had  been  patiently  trying  to  reclaim  this  woman,  without  a 
word  of  complaint  to  anybody,  though  his  life  must  have  been 
a  dog's  life.  And  now,  on  his  deathbed,  what  seemed  to  be 
breaking  his  heart  was,  not  that  he  was  dying,  but  that  his 
task  was  snatched  from  him  ! ' 

Flaxman  paused,  and  looked  away  out  of  window.  He  told 
his  story  with  difficulty. 

'  Your  husband  tried  to  comfort  him — promised  that  the  wife 
and  children  should  be  his  special  care,  that  everything  that 
could  be  done  to  save  and  protect  them  should  be  done.  And 
the  poor  little  fellow  looked  up  at  him,  with  the  tears  running 
down  his  cheeks,  and — and — blessed  him.  "I  cared  about 
nothing,"  he  said,  "when  you  came.  You've  been — God — to  me 
— I've  seen  Him — in  you."  Then  he  asked  us  to  say  something. 
Your  husband  said  verse  after  verse  of  the  Psalms,  of  the 
Gospels,  of  St.  PauL  His  eyes  grew  filmy,  but  he  seemed 
every  now  and  then  to  struggle  back  to  life,  and  as  soon  as  he 
caught  Elsmere's  face  his  look  lightened.  Towards  the  last  he 
said  something  we  none  of  us  caught ;  but  your  husband 
thought  it  was  a  line  from  Emily  Bronte's  "  Hymn,"  which  he 
said  to  them  last  Sunday  in  lecture.' 

He  looked  up  at  her  interrogatively,  but  there  was  no 
response  in  her  face. 

4 1  asked  him  about  it,'  the  speaker  went  on,  '  as  we  came 
home.  He  said  Grey  of  St.  Anselm's  once  quoted  it  to  him,  and 
he  has  had  a  love  for  it  ever  since.' 

'  Did  he  die  while  you  were  there  I'  asked  Catherine  presently 
after  a  silence.  Her  voice  was  dull  and  quiet.  He  thought  her 
a  strange  woman. 

'  No,'  said  Flaxman,  almost  sharply  ;  '  but  by  now  it  must  be 
over.  The  last  sign  of  consciousness  was  a  murmur  of  his 
children's  names.  They  brought  them  in,  but  his  hands  had  to 
be  guided  to  them.  A  few  minutes  after  it  seemed  to  me  that 
he  was  really  gone,  though  he  still  breathed.  The  doctor  was 
certain  there  would  be  no  more  consciousness.  We  stayed 
nearly  another  hour.  Then  his  brother  came,  and  some  other 
relations,  and  we  left  him.  Oh,  it  is  over  now  ! ' 

Hugh  Flaxman  sat  looking  out  into  the  dingy  bit  of  London 
garden.  Penetrated  with  pity  as  he  was,  he  felt  the  presence  of 


CHAP.  XLII  NEW  OPENINGS  519 

Elsmere's  pale,  silent,  unsympathetic  wife  an  oppression.  How 
could  she  receive  such  a  story  in  such  a  way  ? 

The  door  opened  and  Robert  came  in  hurriedly. 

'  Good-night,  Catherine — he  has  told  you  ? ' 

He  stood  by  her,  his  hand  on  her  shoulder,  wistfully  looking 
at  her,  the  face  full  of  signs  of  what  he  had  gone  through. 

'  Yes,  it  was  terrible  ! '  she  said,  with  an  effort. 

His  face  fell.  He  kissed  her  on  the  forehead  and  went 
away. 

When  he  was  gone,  Flaxman  suddenly  got  up  and  leant 
against  the  open  French  window,  looking  keenly  down  on  his 
companion.  A  new  idea  had  stirred  in  him. 

And  presently,  after  more  talk  of  the  incident  of  the  after- 
noon, and  when  he  had  recovered  his  usual  manner,  he  slipped 
gradually  into  the  subject  of  his  own  experiences  in  North 

R during  the  last  six  months.  He  assumed  all  through 

that  she  knew  as  much  as  there  was  to  be  known  of  Elsmere's 
work,  and  that  she  was  as  much  interested  as  the  normal  wife 
is  in  her  husband's  doings.  His  tact,  his  delicacy,  never  failed 
him  for  a  moment.  But  he  spoke  of  his  own  impressions,  of 
matters  within  his  personal  knowledge.  And  since  the  Easter 
sermon  he  had  been  much  on  Elsmere's  track ;  he  had  been 
filled  with  curiosity  about  him. 

Catherine  sat  a  little  way  from  him,  her  blue  dress  lying  in 
long  folds  about  her,  her  head  bent,  her  long  fingers  crossed  on 
her  lap.  Sometimes  she  gave  him  a  startled  look?  sometimes 
she  shaded  her  eyes,  while  her  other  hand  played  silently  with 
her  watch-chain.  Flaxman,  watching  her  closely,  however  little 
he  might  seem  to  do  so,  was  struck  by  her  austere  and  delicate 
beauty  as  he  had  never  been  before. 

She  hardly  spoke  all  through,  but  he  felt  that  she  listened 
without  resistance,  nay,  at  last  that  she  listened  with  a  kind  of 
hunger.  He  went  from  story  to  story,  from  scene  to  scene, 
without  any  excitement,  in  his  most  ordinary  manner,  making 
his  reserves  now  and  then,  expressing  his  own  opinion  when  it 
occurred  to  him,  and  not  always  favourably.  But  gradually  the 
whole  picture  emerged,  began  to  live  before  them.  At  last  he 
hurriedly  looked  at  his  watch. 

'  What  a  time  I  have  kept  you  !  It  has  been  a  relief  to  talk 
to  you.' 

'  You  have  not  had  dinner  ! '  she  said,  looking  up  at  him  with 
a  sudden  nervous  bewilderment  which  touched  him  and  subtly 
changed  his  impression  of  her. 

'  No  matter.    I  will  get  some  at  home.    Good-night ! ' 

When  he  was  gone  she  carried  the  child  up  to  bed ;  her 
supper  was  brought  to  her  solitary  in  the  dining-room ;  and 
afterwards  in  the  drawing-room,  where  a  soft  twilight  was 
fading  into  a  soft  and  starlit  night,  she  mechanically  brought 
out  some  work  for  Mary,  and  sat  bending  over  it  by  the 
window.  After  about  an  hour  she  looked  up  straight  before 


520  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

her,  threw  her  work  down,  and  slipped  on  to  the  floor,  her  head 
resting  on  the  chair. 

The  shock,  the  storm,  had  come.  There  for  hours  lay 
Catherine  Elsmere  weeping  her  heart  away,  wrestling  with  her- 
self, with  memory,  with  God.  It  was  the  greatest  moral  up- 
heaval she  had  ever  known — greater  even  than  that  which  had 
convulsed  her  life  at  Murewell. 


CHAPTER  XLIII 

ROBERT,  tired  and  sick  at  heart,  felt  himself  in  no  mood  this 
evening  for  a  dinner-party  in  which  conversation  would  be 
treated  more  or  less  as  a  fine  art.  Liberal  Catholicism  had  lost 
its  charm ;  his  sympathetic  interest  in  Montalembert,  Lacor- 
daire,  Lamennais,  had  to  be  quickened,  pumped  up  again  as  it 
were,  by  great  efforts,  which  were  constantly  relaxed  within 
him  as  he  sped  westwards  by  the  recurrent  memory  of  that 
miserable  room,  the  group  of  men,  the  bleeding  hand,  the  white 
dying  face. 

In  Madame  de  Netteville's  drawing-room  he  found  a  small 
number  of  people  assembled.  M.  de  Qu^rouelle,  a  middle-sized, 
round-headed  old  gentleman  of  a  familiar  French  type ;  Lady 
Aubrey,  thinner,  more  lath-like  than  ever,  clad  in  some  sumptu- 
ous mingling  of  dark  red  and  silver ;  Lord  Rupert,  beaming 
under  the  recent  introduction  of  a  Land  Purchase  Bill  for 
Ireland,  by  which  he  saw  his  way  at  last  to  wash  his  hands  of 
'  a  beastly  set  of  tenants ' ;  Mr.  Wharncliffe,  a  young  private 
secretary  with  a  waxed  moustache,  six  feet  of  height,  and  a 
general  air  of  superlativeness  which  demanded  and  secured 
attention ;  a  famous  journalist,  whose  smiling  self -repressive 
look  assured  you  that  he  carried  with  him  the  secrets  of  several 
empires ;  and  one  Sir  John  Headlam,  a  little  ^ black -haired 
Jewish -looking  man  with  a  limp — an  ex -Colonial  Governor, 
who  had  made  himself  accepted  in  London  as  an  amusing 
fellow,  but  who  was  at  least  as  much  disliked  by  one  half  of 
society  as  he  was  popular  with  the  other. 

'  Purely  for  talk,  you  see,  not  for  show ! '  said  Madame  de 
Netteville  to  Robert,  with  a  little  smiling  nod  round  her  circle 
as  they  stood  waiting  for  the  commencement  of  dinner. 

'  I  shall  hardly  do  my  part,'  he  said  with  a  little  sigh.  '  I  have 
just  come  from  a  very  different  scene.' 

She  looked  at  him  with  inquiring  eyes. 

'  A  terrible  accident  in  the  East  End,'  he  said  briefly.  '  We 
won't  talk  of  it.  I  only  mention  it  to  propitiate  you  beforehand. 
Those  things  are  not  forgotten  at  once.' 

She  said  no  more,  but,  seeing  that  he  was  indeed  out  of  heart, 
physically  and  mentally,  she  showed  the  most  subtle  considera- 


CHAP.  XLIII  NEW  OPENINGS  521 

tion  for  him  at  dinner.  M.  de  Que'rouelle  was  made  to  talk.  His 
hostess  wound  him  up  and  set  him  going,  tune  after  tune.  He 
played  them  all,  and,  by  dint  of  long  practice,  to  perfection,  in 
the  French  way.  A  visit  of  his  youth  to  the  island  grave  of 
Chateaubriand ;  his  early  memories,  as  a  poetical  aspirant,  of 
the  magnificent  flatteries  by  which  victor  Hugo  made  himself 
the  god  of  young  romantic  Paris ;  his  talks  with  Montalembert 
in  the  days  of  L'Avenir;  his  memories  of  Lamennais's  sombre 
figure,  of  Maurice  de  Gue"rin's  feverish  ethereal  charm ;  his 
account  of  the  opposition  salons  under  the  Empire — they  had 
all  been  elaborated  in  the  course  of  years,  till  every  word  fitted 
and  each  point  led  to  the  next  with  the  '  inevitableness '  of  true 
art.  Robert,  at  first  silent  and  distrait,  found  it  impossible  after 
a  while  not  to  listen  with  interest.  He  admired  the  skill,  too, 
of  Madame  de  Netteville's  second  in  the  duet,  the  finish,  the 
alternate  sparkle  and  melancholy  of  it ;  and  at  last  he  too  was 
drawn  in,  and  found  himself  listened  to  with  great  benevolence 
by  the  Frenchman,  who  had  been  informed  about  him,  and 
regarded  him  indulgently,  as  one  more  curious  specimen  of 
English  religious  provincialisms.  The  journalist,  Mr.  Addle- 
stone,  who  had  won  a  European  reputation  for  wisdom  by  a 
great  scantiness  of  speech  in  society,  coupled  with  the  look  of 
Minerva's  owl,  attached  himself  to  them ;  while  Lady  Aubrey, 
Sir  John  Headlam,  Lord  Rupert,  and  Mr.  Wharnclifle  made  a 
noisier  and  more  dashing  party  at  the  other  end. 

'  Are  you  still  in  your  old  quarters.  Lady  Aubrey  ? '  asked  Sir 
John  Headlam,  turning  his  old  roguish  face  upon  her.  '  That 
house  of  Nell  Gwynne's,  wasn't  it,  in  Meade  Street  ? ' 

'  Oh  dear  no  !  We  could  only  get  it  up  to  May  this  year,  and 
then  they  made  us  turn  out  for  the  season,  for  the  first  time  for 
ten  years.  There  is  a  tiresome  young  heir  who  has  married  a 
wife  and  wants  to  live  in  it.  I  could  have  left  a  train  of  gun- 
powder and  a  slow  match  behind,  I  was  so  cross  ! ' 

'Ah — "Reculer  pour  mieux  faire  sauter!"'  said  Sir  John, 
mincing  out  his  pun  as  though  he  loved  it. 

'  Not  bad,  Sir  John,'  she  said,  looking  at  him  calmly, '  but  you 
have  way  to  make  up.  You  were  so  dull  the  last  tune  you  took 
me  in  to  dinner,  that  positively ' 

'  You  began  to  wonder  to  what  I  owed  my  paragraph  in  the 
Socidie de  Londres'  he  rejoined,  smiling,  though  a  close  observer 
might  have  seen  an  angry  flash  in  his  little  eyes.  'My  dear 
Lady  Aubrey,  it  was  simply  because  I  had  not  seen  you  for  six 
weeks.  My  education  had  been  neglected.  I  get  my  art  and 
my  literature  from  you.  The  last  time  but  one  we  met,  you 

§ave  me  the  cream  of  three  new  French  novels  and  all  the 
ramatic  scandal  of  the  period.    I  have  lived  on  it  for  weeks. 

By  the  way,  have  you  read  the  Princesse  de ? ' 

He  looked  at  her  audaciously.  The  book  had  affronted  even 
Paris. 

'  I  haven't,'  she  said,  adjusting  her  bracelets,  while  she  flashed 


522  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

a  rapier-glance  at  him,  '  but  if  I  had,  I  should  say  precisely  the 
same.  Lord  Rupert,  will  you  kindly  keep  Sir  John  in  order  ? ' 

Lord  Rupert  plunged  in  with  the  gallant  floundering  motion 
characteristic  of  him,  while  Mr.  Wharncliffe  followed  like  a 
modern  gunboat  behind  a  three-decker.  That  young  man  was 
a  delusion.  The  casual  spectator,  to  borrow  a  famous  Cam- 
bridge mot,  invariably  assumed  that  all '  the  time  he  could  spare 
from  neglecting  his  duties  he  must  spend  in  adorning  his  person.' 
Not  at  all !  The  tenue  of  a  dandy  was  never  more  cleverly  used 
to  mask  the  schemes  of  a  Disraeli  or  the  hard  ambition  of  a 
Talleyrand  than  in  Master  Frederick  Wharncliffe,  who  was  in 
reality  going  up  the  ladder  hand  over  hand,  and  meant  very 
soon  to  be  on  the  top  rungs. 

It  was  a  curious  party,  typical  of  the  house,  and  of  a  certain 
stratum  of  London.  When,  every  now  and  then,  in  the  pauses 
of  their  own  conversation,  Elsmere  caught  something  of  the 
chatter  going  on  at  the  other  end  of  the  table,  or  when  the  party 
became  fused  into  one  for  a  while  under  the  genial  influence  of 
a  good  story  or  the  exhilaration  of  a  personal  skirmish,  the 
whole  scene — the  dainty  oval  room,  the  lights,  the  servants,  the 
exquisite  fruit  and  flowers,  the  gleaming  silver,  the  tapestried 
walls — would  seem  to  him  for  an  instant  like  a  mirage,  a  dream, 
yet  with  something  glittering  and  arid  about  it  which  a  dream 
never  has. 

The  hard  self-confidence  of  these  people — did  it  belong  to  the 
same  world  as  that  humbling,  that  heavenly  self-abandonment 
which  had  shone  on  him  that  afternoon  from  Charles  Richards's 
begrimed  and  blood-stained  face  ?  ' Blessed  are  the  poor  in  spirit' 
he  said  to  himself  once  with  an  inward  groan.  '  Why  am  I 
here  ?  Why  am  I  not  at  home  with  Catherine  1 ' 

But  Madame  de  Netteville  was  pleasant  to  him.  He  had 
never  seen  her  so  womanly,  never  felt  more  grateful  for  her 
delicate  social  skill.  As  she  talked  to  him,  or  to  the  Frenchman, 
of  literature,  or  politics,  or  famous  folk,  flashing  her  beautiful 
eyes  from  one  to  the  other,  Sir  John  Headlam  would,  every  now 
and  then,  turn  his  odd  puckered  face  observantly  towards  the 
farther  end  of  the  table. 

'  By  Jove  ! '  he  said  afterwards  to  Wharncliffe  as  they  walked 
away  from  the  door  together,  '  she  was  inimitable  to-night ;  she 
lias  more  roles  than  Desforets  ! '  Sir  John  and  his  hostess  were 
very  old  friends. 

Upstairs  smoking  began,  Lady  Aubrey  and  Madame  de  Nette- 
ville  joining  in.  M.  de  Que"rouelle,  having  talked  the  best  of 
his  repertoire  at  dinner,  was  now  inclined  for  amusement,  and 
had  discovered  that  Lady  Aubrey  could  amuse  him,  and  was, 
moreover,  une  belle  personne.  Madame  de  Netteville  was 
obliged  to  give  some  time  to  Lord  Rupert.  The  other  men 
stood  chatting  politics  and  the  latest  news,  till  Robert,  conscious 
of  a  complete  failure  of  social  energy,  began  to  look  at  his 
watch.  Instantly  Madame  de  Netteville  glided  up  to  him. 


CHAP.  XLIII  NEW  OPENINGS  523 

'  Mr.  Elsmere,  you  have  talked  no  business  to  me,  and  I  must 
know  how  my  aft'airs  in  Elgood  Street  are  getting  on.  Come 
into  my  little  writing -room.'  And  she  led  him  into  a  tiny 
panelled  room  at  the  far  end  of  the  drawing-room  and  shut  off 
from  it  by  a  heavy  curtain,  which  she  now  left  half -drawn. 

'  The  latest  ? '  said  Fred  Wharncliffe  to  Lady  Aubrey,  raising 
his  eyebrows  with  the  slightest  motion  of  the  head  towards  the 
writing-room. 

'  I  suppose  so,'  she  said  indifferently  ;  '  she  is  East-Ending  for 
a  change.  We  all  do  it  nowadays.  It  is  like  Dizzy's  young 
man  who  "  liked  bad  wine,  he  was  so  bored  with  good." ' 

Meanwhile,  Madame  de  Netteville  was  leaning  against  the 
open  window  of  the  fantastic  little  room,  with  Robert  beside 
her. 

'  You  look  as  if  you  had  had  a  strain,'  she  said  to  him  abruptly, 
after  they  had  talked  business  for  a  few  minutes.  '  What  has 
been  the  matter  ? ' 

He  told  her  Richards's  story,  very  shortly.  It  would  have 
been  impossible  to  him  to  give  more  than  the  driest  outline  of 
it  in  that  room.  His  companion  listened  gravely.  She  was  an 
epicure  in  all  things,  especially  in  moral  sensation,  and  she 
liked  his  moments  of  reserve  and  strong  self-control.  They 
made  his  general  expansiveness  more  distinguished. 

Presently  there  was  a  pause,  which  she  broke  by  saying — 

'  I  was  at  your  lecture  last  Sunday — you  didn't  see  me  ! ' 

'  Were  you  ?  Ah  !  I  remember  a  person  in  black,  and  veiled, 
who  puzzled  me.  I  don't  think  we  want  you  there,  Madame  de 
Netteville.' 

His  look  was  pleasant,  but  his  tone  had  some  decision 
in  it. 

'Why  not?  Is  it  only  the  artisans  who  have  souls?  A 
reformer  should  refuse  no  one.' 

'  You  have  your  own  opportunities,'  he  said  quietly  ;  '  I  think 
the  men  prefer  to  have  it  to  themselves  for  the  present.  Some 
of  them  are  dreadfully  in  earnest.' 

'  Oh,  I  don't  pretend  to  be  in  earnest,'  she  said  with  a  little 
wave  of  her  hand ;  '  or,  at  any  rate,  I  know  better  than  to  talk 
of  earnestness  to  you.' 

'  Why  to  me  ?'  he  asked,  smiling. 

'  Oh,  because  you  and  your  like  have  your  fixed  ideas  of  the 
upper  class  and  the  lower.  One  social  type  fills  up  your  horizon. 
You  are  not  interested  in  any  other,  and,  indeed,  you  know 
nothing  of  any  other.' 

She  looked  at  him  defiantly.  Everything  about  her  to-night 
was  splendid  and  regal — her  dress  of  black  and  white  brocade, 
the  diamonds  at  her  throat,  the  carriage  of  her  head,  nay,  the 
marks  of  experience  and  living  on  the  dark  subtle  face. 

'  Perhaps  not,'  he  replied  •  '  it  is  enough  for  one  life  to  try  and 
make  out  where  the  English  working  class  is  tending  to.' 

'  You  are  quite  wrong,  utterly  wrong.    The  man  who  keeps 


524  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

his  eye  only  on  the  lower  class  will  achieve  nothing.  What  can 
the  idealist  do  without  the  men  of  action — the  men  who  can 
take  his  beliefs  and  make  them  enter  by  violence  into  existing 
institutions  ?  And  the  men  of  action  are  to  be  found  with  us.' 

'  It  hardly  looks  just  now  as  if  the  upper  class  was  to  go  on 
enjoying  a  monopoly  of  them,'  he  said,  smiling. 

"Then  appearances  are  deceptive.  The  populace  supplies 
mass  and  weight — nothing  else.  What  you  want  is  to  touch  the 
leaders,  the  men  and  women  whose  voices  carry,  and  then  your 
populace  would  follow  hard  enough.  For  instance,' — and  she 
dropped  her  aggressive  tone  and  spoke  with  a  smiling  kind- 
ness,— '  come  down  next  Saturday  to  my  little  Surrey  cottage  ; 
you  shall  see  some  of  these  men  and  women  there,  and  I  will 
make  you  confess  when  you  go  away  that  you  have  profited 
your  workmen  more  by  deserting  them  than  by  staying  with 
them.  Will  you  come  1 ' 

'  My  Sundays  are  too  precious  to  me  just  now,  Madame  de 
Netteville.  Besides,  my  firm  conviction  is  that  the  upper  class 
can  produce  a  Brook  Farm,  but  nothing  more.  The  religious 
movement  of  the  future  will  want  a  vast  effusion  of  feeling  and 
passion  to  carry  it  into  action,  and  feeling  and  passion  are  only 
to  be  generated  in  sufficient  volume  among  the  masses,  where 
the  vested  interests  of  all  kinds  are  less  tremendous.  You 
upper-class  folk  have  your  part,  of  course.  Woe  betide  you  if 
you  shirk  it — but ' 

'  Oh,  let  us  leave  it  alone,'  she  said  with  a  little  shrug.  '  I 
know  you  would  give  us  all  the  work  and  refuse  us  all  the  pro- 
fits. We  are  to  starve  for  your  workman,  to  give  him  our 
hearts  and  purses  and  everything  we  have,  not  that  we  may 
hoodwink  him — which  might  be  worth  doing — but  that  he  may 
rule  us.  It  is  too  much  ! ' 

'  Very  well,'  he  said  drily,  his  colour  rising.  '  Very  well,  let 
it  be  too  much.' 

And,  dropping  his  lounging  attitude,  he  stood  erect,  and  she 
saw  that  he  meant  to  be  going.  Her  look  swept  over  him  from 
head  to  foot — over  the  worn  face  with  its  look  of  sensitive 
refinement  and  spiritual  force,  the  active  frame,  the  delicate  but 
most  characteristic  hand.  Never  had  any  man  so  attracted  her 
for  years ;  never  had  she  found  it  so  difficult  to  gain  a  hold. 
Eugenie  de  Netteville,  poseuse,  schemer,  woman  of  the  world 
that  she  was,  was  losing  command  of  herself. 

'  What  did  you  really  mean  by  "  worldliness  "  and  the  "  world  " 
in  your  lecture  last  Sunday  ? '  she  asked  him  suddenly,  with  a 
little  accent  of  scorn.  '  I  thought  your  diatribes  absurd.  What 
you  religious  people  call  the  "  world  "  is  really  only  the  average 
opinion  of  sensible  people  which  neither  you  nor  your  kind 
could  do  without  for  a  day.' 

He  smiled,  half  amused  by  her  provocative  tone,  and  defended 
himself  not  very  seriously.  But  she  threw  all  her  strength  into 
the  argument,  and  he  forgot  that  he  had  meant  to  go  at  once. 


CHAP.  XLIII  NEW  OPENINGS  525 

When  she  chose  she  could  talk  admirably,  and  she  chose  now. 
She  had  the  most  aggressive  ways  of  attacking,  and  then,  in 
the  same  breath,  the  most  subtle  and  softening  ways  of  yielding 
and,  as  it  were,  of  asking  pardon.  Directly  her  antagonist 
turned  upon  her  he  found  nimself  disarmed  he  knew  not  how. 
The  disputant  disappeared,  and  he  felt  the  woman,  restless, 
melancholy,  sympathetic,  hungry  for  friendship  and  esteem, 
yet  too  proud  to  make  any  direct  bid  for  either.  It  was  im- 
possible not  to  be  interested  and  touched. 

Such  at  least  was  the  woman  whom  Robert  Elsmere  felt. 
Whether  in  his  hours  of  intimacy  with  her,  twelve  months 
before,  young  Alfred  Evershed  had  received  the  same  impres- 
sion may  be  doubted.  In  all  things  Eugenie  de  Netteville  was 
an  artist. 

Suddenly  the  curtain  dividing  them  from  the  larger  drawing- 
room  was  drawn  back,  and  Sir  John  Headlam  stood  in  the 
doorway.  He  had  the  glittering  amused  eyes  of  a  malicious 
child  as  he  looked  at  them. 

'Very  sorry,  madame,'  he  began  in  his  high  cracked  voice, 
'  but  Wharncliffe  and  I  are  off  to  the  New  Club  to  see  Desforets. 
They  have  got  her  there  to-night.' 

'  Go,'  she  said,  waving  her  hand  to  him,  '  I  don't  envy  you. 
She  is  not  what  she  was.' 

'  No,  there  is  only  one  person,'  he  said,  bowing  with  grotesque 
little  airs  of  gallantry,  '  for  whom  time  stands  still.' 

Madame  de  Netteville  looked  at  him  with  smiling  half -con- 
temptuous serenity.  He  bowed  again,  this  time  with  ironical 
emphasis,  and  disappeared. 

'  Perhaps  I  had  better  go  back  and  send  them  off,'  she  said, 
rising.  '  But  you  and  I  have  not  had  our  talk  out  yet.' 

She  led  the  way  into  the  drawing-room.  Lady  Aubrey  was 
lying  back  on  the  velvet  sofa,  a  little  green  paroquet  that  was 
accustomed  to  wander  tamely  about  the  room  perching  on  her 
hand.  She  was  holding  the  field  against  Lord  Rupert  and  Mr. 
Addlestone  in  a  three-cornered  duel  of  wits,  while  M.  de  Que- 
rouelle  sat  by,  his  plump  hands  on  his  knees,  applauding. 

They  all  rose  as  their  hostess  came  in. 

'  My  dear,'  said  Lady  Aubrey,  '  it  is  disgracefully  early,  but 
my  country  before  pleasure.  It  is  the  Foreign  Office  to-night, 
and  since  James  took  office  I  can't  with  decency  absent  myself. 
I  had  rather  be  a  scullerymaid  than  a  minister's  wife.  Lord 
Rupert,  I  will  take  you  on  if  you  want  a  lift.' 

She  touched  Madame  de  Netteville's  cheek  with  her  lips, 
nodding  to  the  other  men  present,  and  went  out,  her  fair  stag- 
like  head  well  in  the  air, '  chaffing '  Lord  Rupert,  who  obediently 
followed  her,  performing  marvellous  feats  01  agility  in  his  desire 
to  keep  out  of  the  way  of  the  superb  train  sweeping  behind  her. 
It  always  seemed  as  if  Lady  Aubrey  could  have  had  no  child- 
hood, as  if  she  must  always  have  had  just  that  voice  and  those 
eyes.  Tears  she'  could  never  have  shed,  not  even  as  a  baby  over 


526  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

a  broken  toy.  Besides,  at  no  period  of  her  life  could  she  have 
looked  upon  a  lost  possession  as  anything  else  than  the  oppor- 
tunity for  a  new  one. 

The  other  men  took  their  departure  for  one  reason  or  another. 
It  was  not  late,  but  London  was  in  full  swing,  and  M.  de  Que- 
rouelle  talked  with  gusto  of  four  '  At  homes '  still  to  be  grappled 
with. 

As  she  dismissed  Mr.  Wharncliffe,  Robert  too  held  out  his 
hand. 

'  No,'  she  said,  with  a  quick  impetuousness,  '  no  :  I  want  my 
talk  out.  It  is  barely  half -past  ten,  and  neither  of  us  wants  to 
be  racing  about  London  to-night.' 

Elsmere  had  always  a  certain  lack  of  social  decision,  and  he 
lingered  rather  reluctantly — for  another  ten  minutes,  as  he 
supposed. 

She  threw  herself  into  a  low  chair.  The  windows  were  open 
to  the  back  of  the  house,  and  the  roar  of  Piccadilly  and  Sloane 
Street  came  borne  in  upon  the  warm  night  air.  Her  superb 
dark  head  stood  out  against  a  stand  of  yellow  lilies  close  behind 
her,  and  the  little  paroquet,  bright  with  all  the  colours  of  the 
tropics,  perched  now  on  her  knee,  now  on  the  back  of  her  chair, 
touched  every  now  and  then  by  quick  unsteady  fingers. 

Then  an  incident  followed  which  Elsmere  remembered  to  his 
dying  day  with  shame  and  humiliation. 

In  ten  minutes  from  the  time  of  their  being  left  alone,  a 
woman  who  was  five  years  his  senior  had  made  him  what  was 
practically  a  confession  of  love — had  given  him  to  understand 
that  she  knew  what  were  the  relations  between  himself  and  his 
wife-^-and  had  implored  him  with  the  quick  breath  of  an  in- 
describable excitement  to  see  what  a  woman's  sympathy  and  a 
woman's  unique  devotion  could  do  for  the  causes  he  had  at 
heart. 

The  truth  broke  upon  Elsmere  very  slowly,  awakening  in 
him,  when  at  last  it  was  unmistakable,  a  swift  agony  of  repul- 
sion, which  his  most  friendly  biographer  can  only  regard  with 
a  kind  of  grim  satisfaction.  For  after  all  there  is  an  amount  of 
innocence  and  absent-mindedness  in  matters  of  daily  human 
life,  which  is  not  only  niaiserie,  but  comes  very  near  to  moral 
wrong.  In  this  crowded  world  a  man  has  no  business  to  walk 
about  with  his  eyes  always  on  the  stars.  His  stumbles  may 
have  too  many  consequences.  A  harsh  but  a  salutary  truth  ! 
If  Elsmere  needed  it,  it  was  bitterly  taught  him  during  a 
terrible  half -hour.  When  the  half -coherent  enigmatical  sen- 
tences, to  which  he  listened  at  first  with  a  perplexed  surprise, 
began  gradually  to  define  themselves  ;  when  he  found  a  woman 
roused  and  tragically  beautiful  between  him  and  escape ;  when 
no  determination  on  his  part  not  to  understand  ;  when  nothing 
he  could  say  availed  to  protect  her  from  herself;  when  they 
were  at  last  face  to  face  with  a  confession  and  an  appeal  which 
were  a  disgrace  to  both — then  at  last  Elsmere  paid  'in  one 


CHAP.  XLIII  NEW  OPENINGS  527 

minute  glad  life's  arrears,' — the  natural  penalty  of  an  optimism, 
a  boundless  faith  in  human  nature,  with  which  life,  as  we  know 
it,  is  inconsistent. 

How  he  met  the  softness,  the  grace,  the  seduction  of  a  woman 
who  was  an  expert  in  all  the  arts  of  fascination  he  never  knew. 
In  memory  afterwards  it  was  all  a  ghastly  mirage  to  him.  The 
low  voice,  the  splendid  dress,  the  scented  room  came  back  to 
him,  and  a  confused  memory  of  his  own  futile  struggle  to  ward 
oil'  what  she  was  bent  on  saying — little  else.  He  had  been 
maladroit,  he  thought,  had  lost  his  presence  of  mind.  Any 
man  of  the  world  of  his  acquaintance,  he  believed,  trampling 
on  himself,  would  have  done  better. 

But  when  the  softness  and  the  grace  were  all  lost  in  smart 
and  humiliation,  when  the  Madame  de  Netteville  of  ordinary 
life  disappeared,  and  something  took  her  place  which  was  like 
a  coarse  and  malignant  underself  suddenly  brought  into  the 
light  of  day — from  that  point  onwards,  in  after  days,  he  remem- 
bered it  all. 

' .  .  .  I  know,'  cried  Eugenie  de  Netteville  at  last,  standing 
at  bay  before  him,  her  hands  locked  before  her,  her  white  lips 
quivering,  when  her  cup  of  shame  was  full,  and  her  one  impulse 
left  was  to  strike  the  man  who  had  humiliated  her — 'I  know 
that  you  and  your  puritanical  wife  are  miserable — miserable. 
What  is  the  use  of  denying  facts  that  all  the  world  can  see, 
that  you  have  taken  pains,'  and  she  laid  a  fierce  deliberate 
emphasis  on  each  word,  '  all  the  world  shall  see  ?  There — let 
your  wife's  ignorance  and  bigotry,  and  your  own  obvious  rela- 
tion to  her,  be  my  excuse,  if  I  wanted  any ;  but,'  and  she 
shrugged  her  white  shoulders  passionately,  '  I  want  none !  I 
am  not  responsible  to  your  petty  codes.  IS  ature  and  feeling  are 
enough  for  me.  I  saw  you  wanting  sympathy  and  affection ' 

'  My  wife  ! '  cried  Robert,  hearing  nothing  but  that  one  word. 
And  then,  his  glance  sweeping  over  the  woman  before  him,  he 
made  a  stern  step  forward. 

'  Let  me  go,  Madame  de  Netteville,  let  me  go,  or  I  shall  forget 
that  you  are  a  woman  and  I  a  man,  and  that  in  some  way  I 
cannot  understand  my  own  blindness  and  folly — 

'  Must  have  led  to  this  most  undesirable  scene,'  she  said  with 
mocking  suddenness,  throwing  herself,  however,  effectually  in 
his  way.  Then  a  change  came  over  her,  and  erect,  ghastly 
white,  with  frowning  brow  and  shaking  limbs,  a  baffled  and 
smarting  woman  from  whom  every  restraint  had  fallen  away, 
let  loose  upon  him  a  torrent  of  gall  and  bitterness  which  he 
could  not  have  cut  short  without  actual  violence. 

He  stood  proudly  enduring  it,  waiting  for  the  moment  when 
what  seemed  to  him  an  outbreak  of  mania  should  have  spent 
itself.  But  suddenly  he  caught  Catherine's  name  coupled  with 
some  contemptuous  epithet  or  other,  and  his  self-control  failed 
him.  With  flashing  eyes  he  went  close  up  to  her  and  took  her 
wrists  in  a  grip  of  iron. 


528  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

'  You  shall  not,'  he  said,  beside  himself,  '  you  shall  not ! 
What  have  I  done — what  has  she  done — that  you  should  allow 
yourself  such  words  1  My  poor  wife  ! ' 

A  passionate  flood  of  self -reproachful  love  was  on  his  lips. 
He  choked  it  back.  It  was  desecration  that  her  name  should  be 
mentioned  in  that  room.  But  he  dropped  the  hand  he  held. 
The  fierceness  died  out  of  his  eyes.  His  companion  stood  beside 
him  panting,  breathless,  afraid. 

'  Thank  God,'  he  said  slowly,  '  thank  God  for  yourself  and  me 
that  I  love  my  wife  !  I  am  not  worthy  of  her — doubly  unworthy, 
since  it  has  been  possible  for  any  human  being  to  suspect  for  one 
instant  that  I  was  ungrateful  for  the  blessing  of  her  love,  that  I 
could  ever  forget  and  dishonour  her !  But  worthy  or  not — 
No  ! — no  matter !  Madame  de  Netteville,  let  me  go,  and  forget 
that  such  a  person  exists.' 

She  looked  at  him  steadily  for  a  moment,  at  the  stern  manli- 
ness of  the  face  which  seemed  in  this  half -hour  to  have  grown 
older,  at  the  attitude  with  its  mingled  dignity  and  appeal.  In 
that  second  she  realised  what  she  had  done  and  what  she  had 
forfeited  ;  she  measured  the  gulf  between  herself  and  the  man 
before  her.  But  she  did  not  flinch.  Still  holding  him,  as  it 
were,  with  menacing  defiant  eyes,  she  moved  aside,  she  waved 
her  hand  with  a  contemptuous  gesture  of  dismissal.  He  bowed, 
passed  her,  and  the  door  shut. 

For  nearly  an  hour  afterwards  Elsmere  wandered  blindly  and 
aimlessly  through  the  darkness  and  silence  of  the  park. 

The  sensitive  optimist  nature  was  all  unhinged,  felt  itself 
wrestling  in  the  grip  of  dark  implacable  things,  upheld  by  a 
single  thread  above  that  moral  abyss  which  yawns  beneath  us 
all,  into  which  the  individual  life  sinks  so  easily  to  ruin  and 
nothingness.  At  such  moments  a  man  realises  within  himself, 
within  the  circle  of  consciousness,  the  germs  of  all  tilings  hideous 
and  vile.  '  Save  for  the  grace  of  God,'  he  says  to  himself,  shud- 
dering, '  save  only  for  the  grace  of  God ' 

Contempt  for  himself,  loathing  for  life  and  its  possibilities,  as 
he  had  just  beheld  them ;  moral  tumult,  pity,  remorse,  a 
stinging  self-reproach — all  these  things  wrestled  within  him. 
What,  preach  to  others,  and  stumble  himself  into  such  mire  as 
this  ?  Talk  loudly  of  love  and  faith,  and  make  it  possible  all  the 
time  that  a  fellow  human  creature  should  think  you  capable  at 
a  pinch  of  the  worst  treason  against  both  ? 

Elsmere  dived  to  the  very  depths  of  his  own  soul  that  night. 
Was  it  all  the  natural  consequence  of  a  loosened  bond,  of  a 
wretched  relaxation  of  effort — a  wretched  acquiescence  in  some- 
thing second  best?  Had  love  been  cooling?  Had  it  simply 
ceased  to  take  the  trouble  love  must  take  to  maintain  itself  ? 
And  had  this  horror  been  the  subtle  inevitable  Nemesis  ? 

All  at  once,  under  the  trees  of  the  park,  Elsmere  stopped  for  a 
moment  in  the  darkness,  and  bared  his  head,  with  the  passionate 


CHAP.  XLIII  NEW  OPENINGS  529 

reverential  action  of  a  devotee  before  his  saint.  The  lurid  image 
which  had  been  pursuing  him  gave  way,  and  in  its  place  came 
the  image  of  a  new-made  mother,  her  child  close  within  her 
sheltering  arm.  Ah  !  it  was  all  plain  to  him  now.  The  moral 
tempest  had  done  its  work. 

One  task  of  all  tasks  had  been  set  him  from  the  beginning — 
to  keep  his  wife's  love  !  If  she  had  slipped  away  from  him,  to 
the  injury  and  moral  lessening  of  both,  on  his  cowardice,  on  his 
clumsiness,  be  the  blame  !  Above  all,  on  his  fatal  power  of  ab- 
sorbing himself  in  a  hundred  outside  interests,  controversy, 
literature,  society.  Even  his  work  seemed  to  have  lost  half  its 
sacred  ness.  If  there  be  a  canker  at  the  root,  no  matter  how 
large  the  show  of  leaf  and  blossom  overhead,  there  is  but  the 
more  to  wither  !  Of  what  worth  is  any  success,  but  that  which 
is  grounded  deep  on  the  rock  of  personal  love  and  duty  ? 

Oh  !  let  him  go  back  to  her ! — wrestle  with  her,  open  his  heart 
again,  try  new  ways,  make  new  concessions.  How  faint  the 
sense  of  her  trial  has  been  growing  within  him  of  late !  hers 
which  had  once  been  more  terrible  to  him  than  his  own  !  He 
feels  the  special  temptations  of  his  own  nature ;  he  throws  him- 
self, humbled,  convicted,  at  her  feet.  The  woman,  the  scene  he 
has  left,  is  effaced,  blotted  out  by  the  natural  intense  reaction 
of  remorseful  love. 

So  he  sped  homewards  at  last  through  the  noise  of  Oxford 
Street,  seeing,  hearing  nothing.  He  opened  his  own  door,  and 
let  himself  into  the  dim,  silent  house.  How  the  moment  recalled 
to  him  that  other  supreme  moment  of  his  life  at  Murewell !  No 
light  in  the  drawing-room.  He  went  upstairs  and  softly  turned 
the  handle  of  her  room. 

Inside  the  room  seemed  to  him  nearly  dark.  But  the  window 
was  wide  open.  The  free  loosely-growing  branches  of  the  plane 
trees  made  a  dark,  delicate  network  against  the  luminous  blue 
of  the  night.  A  cool  air  came  to  him  laden  with  an  almost  rural 
scent  of  earth  and  leaves.  By  the  window  sat  a  white  motion- 
less figure.  As  he  closed  the  door  it  rose  and  walked  towards 
him  without  a  word.  Instinctively  Robert  felt  that  something 
unknown  to  him  had  been  passing  here.  He  paused  breathless, 
expectant. 

She  came  to  him.  She  linked  her  cold  trembling  fingers 
round  his  neck. 

'  Robert,  I  have  been  waiting  so  long — it  was  so  late  !  I 
thought ' — and  she  choked  down  a  sob — '  perhaps  something  has 
happened  to  him,  we  are  separated  for  ever,  and  I  shall  never 
be  able  to  tell  him.  Robert,  Mr.  Flaxman  talked  to  me;  he 
opened  my  eyes  ;  I  have  been  so  cruel  to  you,  so  hard  !  I  have 
broken  my  vow.  I  don't  deserve  it ;  but — Robert  I ' 

She  had  spoken  with  extraordinary  self-command  till  the  last 
word,  which  fell  into  a  smothered  cry  for  pardon.  Catherine 
Elsmere  had  very  little  of  the  soft  clingingness  which  makes  the 

2  M 


530  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

charm  of  a  certain  type  of  woman.  Each  phrase  she  had  spoken 
had  seemed  to  take  with  it  a  piece  of  her  life.  She  trembled 
and  tottered  in  her  husband's  arms. 

He  bent  over  her  with  half -articulate  words  of  amazement, 
of  passion.  He  led  her  to  her  chair,  and,  kneeling  before  her, 
he  tried,  so  far  as  the  emotion  of  both  would  let  him,  to  make 
her  realise  what  was  in  his  own  heart,  the  penitence  and  longing 
which  had  winged  his  return  to  her.  Without  a  mention  of 
Madame  de  Netteville's  name,  indeed  !  That  horror  she  should 
never  know.  But  it  was  to  it,  as  he  held  his  wife,  he  owed  his 
poignant  sense  of  something  half -jeopardised  and  wholly  re- 
covered ;  it  was  that  consciousness  in  the  background  of  his 
mind,  ignorant  of  it  as  Catherine  was  then  and  always,  which 
gave  the  peculiar  epoch-making  force  to  this  sacred  and  critical 
hour  of  their  lives.  But  she  would  hear  nothing  of  his  self- 
blame — nothing.  She  put  her  hand  across  his  lips. 

'  I  have  seen  things  as  they  are,  Robert,'  she  said  very  simply ; 
'  while  I  have  been  sitting  here,  and  downstairs,  after  Mr.  Flax- 
man  left  me.  You  were  right—I  would  not  understand.  And, 
in  a  sense,  I  shall  never  understand.  I  cannot  change,'  and  her 
voice  broke  into  piteousness.  '  My  Lord  is  my  Lord  always ; 
but  He  is  yours  too.  Oh,  I  know  it,  say  what  you  will !  That 
is  what  has  been  hidden  from  me ;  that  is  what  my  trouble 
has  taught  me ;  the  powerlessness,  the  worthlessness,  of  words. 
It  is  the  spirit  that  quickeneth.  I  should  never  have  felt  it  so, 
but  for  this  fiery  furnace  of  pain.  But  I  have  been  wandering 
in  strange  places,  through  strange  thoughts.  God  has  not  one 
language,  but  many.  I  have  dared  to  think  He  had  but  one, 
the  one  I  knew.  I  have  dared ' — and  she  faltered — '  to  condemn 
your  faith  as  no  faith.  Oh !  I  lay  there  so  long  in  the  dark 
downstairs,  seeing  you  by  that  bed ;  I  heard  your  voice,  I  crept 
to  your  side.  Jesus  was  there,  too.  Ah,  He  was — He  was  ! 
Leave  me  that  comfort !  What  are  you  saying  ?  Wrong — you  ? 
Unkind  ?  Your  wife  knows  nothing  of  it.  Oh,  did  you  think 
when  you  came  in  just  now  before  dinner  that  I  didn't  care,  that 
I  had  a  heart  of  stone  ?  Did  you  think  I  had  broken  my  solemn 
promise,  my  vow  to  you  that  day  at  Murewell  1  So  I  have,  a 
hundred  times  over.  I  made  it  in  ignorance ;  I  had  not  counted 
the  cost — how  could  I  ?  It  was  all  so  new,  so  strange.  I  dare 
not  make  it  again,  the  will  is  so  weak,  circumstances  so  strong. 
But  oh  !  take  me  back  into  your  life  !  Hold  me  there  !  Remind 
me  always  of  this  night ;  convict  me  out  of  my  own  mouth ! 
But  I  will  learn  my  lesson  ;  I  will  learn  to  hear  the  two  voices, 
the  voice  that  speaks  to  you  and  the  voice  that  speaks  to  me — 
I  must.  It  is  all  plain  to  me  now.  It  has  been  appointed  me.' 

Then  she  broke  down  into  a  kind  of  weariness,  and  fell  back 
in  her  chair,  her  delicate  fingers  straying  with  soft  childish 
touch  over  his  hair. 

'  But  I  am  past  thinking.  Let  us  bury  it  all,  and  begin  again. 
Words  are  nothing.' 


CHAP.  XLIV  NEW  OPENINGS  531 

Strange  ending  to  a  day  of  torture  !  As  she  towered  above 
him  in  the  dimness,  white  and  pure  and  drooping,  her  force  of 
nature  all  dissolved,  lost  in  this  new  heavenly  weakness  of  love, 
he  thought  of  the  man  who  passed  through  the  place  of  sin,  and 
the  place  of  expiation,  and  saw  at  last  the  rosy  light  creeping 
along  the  East,  caught  the  white  moving  figures,  and  that  sweet 
distant  melody  rising  through  the  luminous  air,  which  an- 
nounced to  him  the  approach  of  Beatrice  and  the  nearness  of 
those  '  shining  tablelands  whereof  our  God  Himself  is  moon  and 
sun.'  For  eternal  life,  the  ideal  state,  is  not  something  future 
and  distant.  Dante  knew  it  when  he  talked  of  '  quella  que  im- 
paradisa  la  mia  mente.'  Paradise  is  here,  visible  and  tangible 
oy  mortal  eyes  and  hands,  whenever  self  is  lost  in  loving,  when- 
ever the  narrow  limits  of  personality  are  beaten  down  by  the 
inrush  of  the  Divine  Spirit. 


CHAPTEE  XLIV 

THE  saddest  moment  in  the  lives  of  these  two  persons  whose 
history  we  have  followed  for  so  long  was  over  and  done  with. 
Henceforward  to  the  end  Elsmere  and  his  wife  were  lovers  as 
of  old. 

But  that  day  and  night  left  even  deeper  marks  on  Robert 
than  on  Catherine.  Afterwards  she  gradually  came  to  feel, 
running  all  through  his  views  of  life,  a  note  sterner,  deeper, 
maturer  than  any  present  there  before.  The  reasons  for  it 
were  unknown  to  her,  though  sometimes  her  own  tender,  igno- 
rant remorse  supplied  them.  But  they  were  hidden  deep  in 
Elsmere's  memory. 

A  few  days  afterwards  he  was  casually  told  that  Madame  de 
Netteville  had  left  England  for  some  time.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
he  never  set  eyes  on  her  again.  After  a  while  the  extravagance 
of  his  self -blame  abated.  lie  saw  things  as  they  were — without 
morbidness.  But  a  certain  boyish  carelessness  of  mood  he 
never  afterwards  quite  recovered.  Men  and  women  of  all 
classes,  and  not  only  among  the  poor,  became  more  real  and 
more  tragic — moral  truths  more  awful — to  him.  It  was  the 
penalty  of  a  highly-strung  nature  set  with  exclusive  intensity 
towards  certain  spiritual  ends. 

On  the  first  opportunity  after  that  conversation  with  Hugh 
Flaxman  which  had  so  deeply  affected  her,  Catherine  accom- 
panied Elsmere  to  his  Sunday  lecture.  He  tried  a  little, 
tenderly,  to  dissuade  her.  But  she  went,  shrinking  and  yet 
determined. 

She  had  not  heard  him  speak  in  public  since  that  last  sermon 
of  his  in  Murewell  Church,  every  detail  of  which  by  long  brood- 
ing had  been  burnt  into  her  mind.  The  bare  Elgood  Street 
room,  the  dingy  outlook  on  the  high  walls  of  a  warehouse  oppo- 


532  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

site,  the  lines  of  blanched  quick-eyed  artisans,  the  dissent  from 
what  she  loved,  and  he  had  once  loved,  implied  in  every- 
thing, the  lecture  itself,  on  the  narratives  of  the  Passion ;  it 
was  all  exquisitely  painful  to  her,  and,  yet,  yet  she  was  glad 
to  be  there. 

Afterwards  Wardlaw,  with  the  brusque  remark  to  Elsmere 
that '  any  fool  could  see  he  was  getting  done  up,'  insisted  on 
taking  the  children's  class.  Catherine,  too,  had  been  impressed, 
as  she  saw  Robert  raised  a  little  above  her  in  the  glare  of  many 
windows,  with  the  sudden  perception  that  the  worn,  exhausted 
look  of  the  preceding  summer  had  returned  upon  him.  She 
held  out  her  hand  to  Wardlaw  with  a  quick,  warm  word  of 
thanks.  He  glanced  at  her  curiously.  What  had  brought  her 
there  after  all  ? 

Then  Robert,  protesting  that  he  was  being  ridiculously  cod- 
dled, and  that  Wardlaw  was  much  more  in  want  of  a  holiday 
than  he,  was  carried  off  to  the  Embankment,  and  the  two  spent 
a  happy  hour  wandering  westward,  Somerset  House,  the  bridges, 
the  Westminster  towers  rising  before  them  into  the  haze  of  the 
June  afternoon.  A  little  fresh  breeze  came  off  the  river  ;  that,  or 
his  wife's  hand  on  his  arm,  seemed  to  put  new  life  into  Elsmere. 
And  she  walked  beside  him,  talking  frankly,  heart  to  heart, 
with  flashes  of  her  old  sweet  gaiety,  as  she  had  not  talked  for 
months. 

Deep  in  her  mystical  sense  all  the  time  lay  the  belief  in  a 
final  restoration,  in  an  all-atoning  moment,  perhaps  at  the  very 
end  of  life,  in  which  the  blind  would  see,  the  doubter  be  con- 
vinced. And,  meanwhile,  the  blessedness  of  this  peace,  this  sur- 
render !  Surely  the  air  this  afternoon  was  pure  and  life-giving 
for  them,  the  bells  rang  for  them,  the  trees  were  green  for  them  ! 

He  had  need  in  the  week  that  followed  of  all  that  she  had 
given  back  to  him.  For  Mr.  Grey's  illness  had  taken  a  danger- 
ous and  alarming  turn.  It  seemed  to  be  the  issue  of  long  ill- 
health,  and  the  doctors  feared  that  there  were  no  resources  of 
constitution  left  to  carry  him  through  it.  Every  day  some  old 
St.  Anselm's  friend  on  the  spot  wrote  to  Elsmere,  and  with  each 
post  the  news  grew  more  despairing.  Since  Elsmere  had  left 
Oxford  he  could  count  on  the  fingers  of  one  hand  the  occasions 
on  which  he  and  Grey  had  met  face  to  face.  But  for  him,  as 
for  many  another  man  of  our  time,  Henry  Grey's  influence  was 
not  primarily  an  influence  of  personal  contact.  His  mere  life, 
that  he  was  there,  on  English  soil,  within  a  measurable  dis- 
tance, had  been  to  Elsmere  in  his  darkest  moments  one  of  his 
thoughts  of  refuge.  At  a  time  when  a  religion  which  can  no 
longer  be  believed  clashes  with  a  scepticism  full  of  danger  to 
conduct,  every  such  witness  as  Grey  to  the  power  of  a  new  and 
coming  truth  holds  a  special  place  in  the  hearts  of  men  who  can 
neither  accept  fairy  tales,  nor  reconcile  themselves  to  a  world 
without  faith.  The  saintly  life  grows  to  be  a  beacon,  a  witness. 


CHAP.  XLIV  NEW  OPENINGS  533 

Men  cling  to  it  as  they  have  always  clung  to  each  other,  to  the 
visible  and  the  tangible ;  as  the  elders  of  Miletus,  though  the 
Way  lay  before  them,  clung  to  the  man  who  had  set  their  feet 
therein,  '  sorrowing  most  of  all  that  they  should  see  his  face  no 
more.' 

The  accounts  grew  worse — all  friends  shut  out,  no  possibility 
of  last  words — the  whole  of  Oxford  moved  and  sorrowing. 
Then  at  last,  on  a  Friday,  came  the  dreaded  expected  letter : 
'  He  is  gone  !  He  died  early  this  morning,  without  pain,  con- 
scious almost  to  the  end.  He  mentioned  several  friends  by 
name,  you  among  them,  during  the  night.  The  funeral  is  to  be 
on  Tuesday.  You  will  be  here,  of  course.' 

Sad  and  memorable  day  !  By  an  untoward  chance  it  fell  in 
Commemoration  week,  ana  Robert  found  the  familiar  streets 
teeming  with  life  and  noise,  under  a  showery  uncertain  sky,  which 
every  now  and  then  would  send  the  bevies  of  lightly -gowned 
maidens,  with  their  mothers  and  attendant  squires,  skurrying 
for  shelter,  and  leave  the  roofs  and  pavements  glistening.  He 
walked  up  to  St.  Anselm's — found,  as  he  expected,  that  the  first 
part  of  the  service  was  to  be  in  the  chapel,  the  rest  in  the 
cemetery,  and  then  mounted  the  well-known  staircase  to  Lang- 
ham's  rooms.  Langham  was  apparently  in  his  bedroom.  Lunch 
was  on  the  table — the  familiar  commons,  the  familiar  toast-and- 
water.  There,  in  a  recess,  were  the  same  splendid  wall  maps  of 
Greece  he  had  so  often  consulted  after  lecture.  There  was  the 
little  case  of  coins,  with  the  gold  Alexanders  he  had  handled 
with  so  much  covetous  reverence  at  eighteen.  Outside,  the 
irregular  quadrangle  with  its  dripping  trees  stretched  before 
him ;  the  steps  of  the  new  Hall,  now  the  shower  was  over,  were 
crowded  with  gowned  figures.  It  might  have  been  yesterday 
that  he  had  stood  in  that  room,  blushing  with  awkward  pleasure 
under  Mr.  Grey's  first  salutation. 

The  bedroom  door  opened  and  Langham  came  in. 

'  Elsmere  !    But  of  course  I  expected  you.' 

His  voice  seemed  to  Robert  curiously  changed.  There  was  a 
flatness  in  it,  an  absence  of  positive  cordiality  which  was  new 
to  him  in  any  greeting  of  Langham's  to  himself,  and  had  a  chill- 
ing effect  upon  him.  The  face,  too,  was  changed.  Tint  and 
expression  were  both  dulled;  its  marble -like  sharpness  and 
finish  had  coarsened  a  little,  and  the  figure,  which  had  never 
possessed  the  erectness  of  youth,  had  now  the  pinched  look  and 
the  confirmed  stoop  of  the  valetudinarian. 

1 1  did  not  write  to  you,  Elsmere,'  he  said  immediately,  as 
though  in  anticipation  of  what  the  other  would  be  sure  to  say  ; 
'  I  knew  nothing  but  what  the  bulletins  said,  and  I  was  told 
that  Cathcart  wrote  to  you.  It  is  many  years  now  since  I  have 
seen  much  of  Grey.  Sit  down  and  have  some  lunch.  We  have 
time,  but  not  too  much  time.' 

Robert  took  a  few  mouthf  uls.  Langham  was  difficult,  talked 
disconnectedly  of  trifles,  and  Robert  was  soon  painfully  con- 


534  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

scious  that  the  old  sympathetic  bond  between  them  no  longer 
existed.  Presently,  Langham,  as  though  with  an  effort  to  re- 
member, asked  after  Catherine,  then  inquired  what  he  was 
doing  in  the  way  of  writing,  and  neither  of  them  mentioned  the 
name  of  Leyburn.  They  left  the  table  and  sat  spasmodically 
talking,  in  reality  expectant.  And  at  last  the  sound  present 
already  in  both  minds  made  itself  heard — the  first  long  solitary 
stroke  of  the  chapel  bell. 

Robert  covered  his  eyes. 

'Do  you  remember  in  this  room,  Langham,  you  introduced 
us  first?' 

'  I  remember,'  replied  the  other  abruptly.  Then,  with  a  half- 
cynical,  half-melancholy  scrutiny  of  his  companion,  he  said, 
after  a  pause,  '  What  a  faculty  of  hero-worship  you  have  always 
had,  Elsmere ! ' 

'  Do  you  know  anything  of  the  end  ? '  Robert  asked  him  pre- 
sently, as  that  tolling  bell  seemed  to  bring  the  strong  feeling 
beneath  more  irresistibly  to  the  surface. 

'  No,  I  never  asked  ! '  cried  Langham,  with  sudden  harsh  ani- 
mation. 'What  purpose  could  be  served?  Death  should  be 
avoided  by  the  living.  We  have  no  business  with  it.  Dp  what 
we  will,  we  cannot  rehearse  our  own  parts.  And  the  sight  of 
other  men's  performances  helps  us  no  more  than  the  sight  of  a 
great  actor  gives  the  dramatic  gift.  All  they  do  for  us  is  to 
imperil  the  little  nerve,  break  through  the  little  calm,  we  have 
left.' 

Elsmere's  hand  dropped,  and  he  turned  round  to  Mm  with  a 
flashing  smile. 

'  Ah — I  know  it  now — you  loved  him  still.' 

Langham,  who  was  standing,  looked  down  on  him  sombrely, 
yet  more  indulgently. 

'  How  much  you  always  made  of  feeling,'  he  said  after  a  little 
pause,  'in  a  world  where,  according  to  me,  our  chief  object 
should  be  not  to  feel ! ' 

Then  he  began  to  hunt  for  his  cap  and  gown.  In  another 
minute  the  two  made  part  of  the  crowd  in  the  front  quadrangle, 
where  the  rain  was  sprinkling,  and  the  insistent  grief-laden 
voice  of  the  bell  rolled,  from  pause  to  pause,  above  the  gowned 
figures,  spreading  thence  in  wide  waves  of  mourning  sound  over 
Oxford. 

The  chapel  service  passed  over  Robert  like  a  solemn  pathetic 
dream.  The  lines  of  undergraduate  faces,  the  provost's  white 
head,  the  voice  of  the  chaplain  reading,  the  full  male  unison  of 
the  voices  replying — how  they  carried  him  back  to  the  day 
when  as  a  lad  from  school  he  had  sat  on  one  of  the  chancel 
benches  beside  his  mother,  listening  for  the  first  time  to  the 
subtle  simplicity,  if  one  may  be  allowed  the  paradox,  of  the 
provost's  preaching  !  Just  opposite  to  where  lie  sat  now  with 
Langham,  Grey  had  sat  that  first  afternoon ;  the  freshman's 
curious  eyes  had  been  drawn  again  and  again  to  the  dark 


CHAP.  XLIV  NEW  OPENINGS  535 

massive  head,  the  face  with  its  look  of  reposeful  force,  of 
righteous  strength.  During  the  lesson  from  Corinthians, 
Elsmere's  thoughts  were  irrelevantly  busy  with  all  sorts  of 
mundane  memories  of  the  dead.  What  was  especially  present 
to  him  was  a  series  of  Liberal  election  meetings  in  which  Grey 
had  taken  a  warm  part,  and  in  which  he  himself  had  helped  just 
before  he  took  Orders.  A  hundred  odd,  incongruous  details 
came  back  to  Robert  now  with  poignant  force.  Grey  had  been 
to  him  at  one  time  primarily  the  professor,  the  philosopher,  the 
representative  of  all  that  was  best  in  the  life  of  the  University ; 
now,  fresh  from  his  own  grapple  with  London  and  its  life,  what 
moved  him  most  was  the  memory  of  the  citizen,  the  friend  and 
brother  of  common  man,  the  thinker  who  had  never  shirked 
action  in  the  name  of  thought,  for  whom  conduct  had  been 
from  beginning  to  end  the  first  reality. 

The  procession  through  the  streets  afterwards,  which  con- 
veyed the  body  of  this  great  son  of  modern  Oxford  to  its  last 
resting-place  in  the  citizens'  cemetery  on  the  western  side  of  the 
town,  will  not  soon  be  forgotten,  even  in  a  place  which  forgets 
notoriously  soon.  All  the  University  was  there,  all  the  town 
was  there.  Side  by  side  with  men  honourably  dear  to  England, 
who  had  carried  with  them  into  one  or  other  of  the  great 
English  careers  the  memory  of  the  teacher,  were  men  who  had 
known  from  day  to  day  the  cheery  modest  helper  in  a  hundred 
local  causes  :  side  by  side  with  the  youth  of  Alma  Mater  went 
the  poor  of  Oxford  :  tradesmen  and  artisans  followed  or  accom- 
panied the  group  01  gowned  and  venerable  figures,  representing 
the  Heads  of  Houses  and  the  Professors,  or  mingled  with  the 
slowly  pacing  crowd  of  Masters  ;  while  along  the  route  groups 
of  visitors  and  merrymakers,  young  men  in  flannels  or  girls  in 
light  dresses,  stood  with  suddenly  grave  faces  here  and  there, 
caught  by  the  general  wave  of  mourning,  and  wondering  what 
such  a  spectacle  might  mean. 

Robert,  losing  sight  of  Langham  as  they  left  the  chapel, 
found  his  arm  grasped  by  young  Cathcart,  his  correspondent. 
The  man  was  a  junior  Fellow  who  had  attached  himself  to  Grey 
during  the  two  preceding  years  with  especial  devotion.  Robert 
had  only  a  slight  knowledge  of  him,  but  there  was  something 
in  his  voice  and  grip  which  made  him  feel  at  once  infinitely 
more  at  home  with  him  at  this  moment  than  he  had  felt  with 
the  old  friend  of  his  undergraduate  years. 

They  walked  down  Beaumont  Street  together.  The  rain  came 
on  again,  and  the  long  black  crowd  stretched  before  them  was 
lashed  by  the  driving  gusts.  As  they  went  along,  Cathcart 
told  him  all  he  wanted  to  know. 

'  The  night  before  the  end  he  was  perfectly  calm  and  consci- 
ous. I  told  you  he  mentioned  your  name  among  the  friends  to 
whom  he  sent  his  good-bye.  He  thought  for  everybody.  For 
all  those  of  his  house  he  left  the  most  minute  and  tender  direc- 
tions. He  forgot  nothing.  And  all  with  such  extraordinary 


536  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

simplicity  and  quietness,  like  one  arranging  for  a  journey  !  In 
the  evening  an  old  Quaker  aunt  of  his,  a  North-country  woman 
whom  he  had  been  much  with  as  a  boy,  and  to  whom  he  was 
much  attached,  was  sitting  with  him.  I  was  there  too.  She 
was  a  beautiful  old  figure  in  her  white  cap  and  kerchief,  and  it 
seemed  to  please  him  to  lie  and  look  at  her.  "  It'll  not  be  for 
long,  Henry,"  she  said  to  him  once.  "I'm  seventy-seven  this 
spring.  I  shall  come  to  you  soon."  He  made  no  reply,  and  his 
silence  seemed  to  disturb  her.  I  don't  fancy  she  had  known 
much  of  his  mind  of  late  years.  "  You'll  not  be  doubting  the 
Lord's  goodness,  Henry  1 "  she  said  to  him,  with  the  tears  in  her 
eyes.  "  No,"  he  said,  "  no,  never.  Only  it  seems  to  be  His  Will, 
we  should  be  certain  of  nothing — but  Himself  !  I  ask  no  more." 
I  shall  never  forget  the  accent  of  those  words  :  they  were  the 
breath  of  his  inmost  life.  If  ever  man  was  Gottbetrunken  it  was 
he — and  yet  not  a  word  beyond  what  he  felt  to  be  true,  beyond 
what  the  intellect  could  grasp  ! ' 

Twenty  minutes  later  Robert  stood  by  the  open  grave.  The 
rain  beat  down  on  the  black  concourse  of  mourners.  But  there 
were  blue  spaces  in  the  drifting  sky,  and  a  wavering  rainy  light 
played  at  intervals  over  the  Wytham  and  Hinksey  Hills,  and 
over  the  butter-cupped  river  meadows,  where  the  lush  hay- 
grass  bent  in  long  lines  under  the  showers.  To  his  left,  the 
provost,  his  glistening  white  head  bare  to  the  rain,  was  reading 
the  rest  of  the  service. 

As  the  coffin  was  lowered  Elsmere  bent  over  the  grave.  '  My 
friend,  my  master,'  cried  the  yearning  filial  heart,  '  oh,  give  me 
something  of  yourself  to  take  back  into  life,  something  to  brace 
me  through  this  darkness  of  our  ignorance,  something  to  keep 
hope  alive  as  you  kept  it  to  the  end  ! ' 

And  on  the  inward  ear  there  rose,  with  the  solemnity  of  a  last 
message,  words  which  years  before  he  had  found  marked  in  a 
little  book  of  Meditations  borrowed  from  Grey's  table — words 
long  treasured  and  often  repeated — 

'  Amid  a  world  of  f  orgetf  ulness  and  decay,  in  the  sight  of  his 
own  shortcomings  and  limitations,  or  on  the  edge  of  the  tomb, 
he  alone  who  has  found  his  soul  in  losing  it,  who  in  singleness 
of  mind  has  lived  in  order  to  love  and  understand,  will  find  that 
the  God  who  is  near  to  him  as  his  own  conscience  has  a  face  of 
light  and  love  ! ' 

Pressing  the  phrases  into  his  memory,  he  listened  to  the 
triumphant  outbursts  of  the  Christian  service. 

'  Man's  hope,'  he  thought,  '  has  grown  humbler  than  this.  It 
keeps  now  a  more  modest  mien  in  the  presence  of  the  Eternal 
Mystery;  but  is  it  in  truth  less  real,  less  sustaining?  Let 
Grey's  trust  answer  for  me.' 

He  walked  away  absorbed,  till  at  last  in  the  little  squalid 
street  outside  the  cemetery  it  occurred  to  him  to  look  round  for 
Langham.  Instead,  he  found  Cathcart,  who  had  just  come  up 
with  him. 


CHAP.  XLIV  NEW  OPENINGS  537 

'  Is  Langham  behind  1 '  he  asked.  '  I  want  a  word  with  him 
before  I  go.' 

'  Is  he  here  ?    asked  the  other  with  a  change  of  expression. 

'  But  of  course  !    He  was  in  the  chapel.    How  could  you ' 

'  I  thought  he  would  probably  go  away,'  said  Cathcart  with 
some  bitterness.  '  Grey  made  many  efforts  to  get  him  to  come 
and  see  him  before  he  became  so  desperately  ill.  Langham 
came  once.  Grey  never  asked  for  him  again.' 

'  It  is  his  old  horror  of  expression,  I  suppose,'  said  Robert 
troubled  ;  'his  dread  of  being  forced  to  take  a  line,  to  face  any- 
thing certain  and  irrevocable.  I  understand.  He  could  not 
say  good-bye  to  a  friend  to  save  his  life.  There  is  no  shirking 
that !  One  must  either  do  it  or  leave  it ! ' 

Cathcart  shrugged  his  shoulders,  and  drew  a  masterly  little 
picture  of  Langham's  life  in  college.  He  had  succeeded  by  the 
most  adroit  devices  in  completely  isolating  himself  both  from 
the  older  and  the  younger  men. 

'He  attends  college-meeting  sometimes,  and  contributes  a 
sarcasm  or  two  on  the  cramming  system  of  the  college.  He 
takes  a  constitutional  to  Summertown  every  day  on  the  least 
frequented  side  of  the  road,  that  he  may  avoid  being  spoken  to. 
And  as  to  his  ways  of  living,  he  and  I  happen  to  have  the  same 
scout — old  Dobson,  you  remember  ?  And  if  I  would  let  him,  he 
would  tell  me  tales  by  the  hour.  He  is  the  only  man  in  the 
University  who  knows  anything  about  it.  I  gather  from  what 
he  says  that  Langham  is  becoming  a  complete  valetudinarian. 
Everything  must  go  exactly  by  rule — his  food,  his  work,  the 
management  of  his  clothes — and  any  little  contretemps  makes 
him  ill.  But  the  comedy  is  to  watch  him  when  there  is  any- 
thing going  on  in  the  place  that  he  thinks  may  lead  to  a  canvass 
and  to  any  attempt  to  influence  him  for  a  vote.  On  these 
occasions  he  goes  off  with  automatic  regularity  to  an  hotel  at 
West  Malyern,  and  only  reappears  when  the  Times  tells  him 
the  thing  is  done  with.' 

Both  laughed.  Then  Robert  sighed.  "Weaknesses  of  Lang- 
ham's  sort  may  be  amusing  enough  to  the  contemptuous  and 
unconcerned  outsider.  But  the  general  result  of  them,  whether 
for  the  man  himself  or  those  whom  he  affects,  is  tragic,  not 
comic  ;  and  Elsmere  had  good  reason  for  knowing  it. 

Later,  after  a  long  talk  with  the  provost,  and  meetings  with 
various  other  old  friends,  he  walked  down  to  the  station,  under 
a  sky  clear  from  rain,  and  through  a  town  gay  with  festal  pre- 
parations. Not  a  sign  now,  in  these  crowded,  bustling  streets, 
of  that  melancholy  pageant  of  the  afternoon.  The  heroic 
memory  had  flashed  for  a  moment  like  something  vivid  and 
gleaming  in  the  sight  of  all,  understanding  and  ignorant.  Now 
it  lay  committed  to  a  few  faithful  hearts,  there  to  become  one 
seed  among  many  of  a  new  religious  life  in  England. 

On  the  platform  Robert  found  himself  nervously  accosted  by 
a  tall  shabbily -dressed  man. 


538  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

'  Elsmere,  have  you  forgotten  me  ? ' 

He  turned  and  recognised  a  man  whom  he  had  last  seen  as  a 
St.  Anselm's  undergraduate — one  MacNiell,  a  handsome  rowdy 
young  Irishman,  supposed  to  be  clever,  and  decidedly  popular 
in  the  college.  As  he  stood  looking  at  him,  puzzled  by  the 
difference  between  the  old  impression  and  the  new,  suddenly 
the  man's  story  flashed  across  him ;  he  remembered  some  dis- 
graceful escapade — an  expulsion. 

'  You  came  for  the  funeral,  of  course  ? '  said  the  other,  his  face 
flushing  consciously. 

'  Yes — and  you  too  1 ' 

The  man  turned  away,  and  something  in  his  silence  led 
Eobert  to  stroll  on  beside  him  to  the  open  end  of  the  platform. 

'  I  have  lost  my  only  friend,'  MacNiell  said  at  last  hoarsely. 
'  He  took  me  up  when  my  own  father  would  have  nothing  to 
say  to  me.  He  found  me  work  ;  he  wrote  to  me ;  for  years  he 
stood  between  me  and  perdition.  I  am  just  going  out  to  a  post 
in  New  Zealand  he  got  for  me,  and  next  week  before  I  sail — I 
— I — am  to  be  married — and  he  was  to  be  there.  He  was  so 
pleased — he  had  seen  her.' 

It  was  one  story  out  of  a  hundred  like  it,  as  Robert  knew 
very  well.  They  talked  for  a  few  minutes,  then  the  train  loomed 
in  the  distance. 

'  He  saved  you,'  said  Robert,  holding  out  his  hand,  '  and  at  a 
dark  moment  in  my  own  life  I  owed  him  everything.  There  is 
nothing  we  can  do  for  him  in  return  but — to  remember  him  ! 
Write  to  me,  if  you  can  or  will,  from  New  Zealand,  for  his  sake.' 

A  few  seconds  later  the  train  sped  past  the  bare  little  ceme- 
tery, which  lay  just  beyond  the  line.  Robert  bent  forward.  In 
the  pale  yellow  glow  of  the  evening  he  could  distinguish  the 
grave,  the  mound  of  gravel,  the  planks,  and  some  figures  mov- 
ing beside  it.  He  strained  his  eyes  till  he  could  see  no  more,  his 
heart  full  of  veneration,  of  memory,  of  prayer.  In  himself  life 
seemed  so  restless  and  combative.  Surely  he,  more  than  others, 
had  need  of  the  lofty  lessons  of  death  ! 


CHAPTER  XLV 

IN  the  weeks  which  followed  —  weeks  often  of  mental  and 
physical  depression,  caused  by  his  sense  of  personal  loss  and  by 
the  influence  of  an  overworked  state  he  could  not  be  got  to 
admit — Elsmere  owed  much  to  Hugh  Flaxman's  cheery  sym- 
pathetic temper,  and  became  more  attached  to  him  than  ever, 
and  more  ready  than  ever,  should  the  fates  deem  it  so,  to  welcome 
him  as  a  brother-in-law.  However,  the  fates  for  the  moment 
seemed  to  have  borrowed  a  leaf  from  Langham's  book,  and  did 
not  apparently  know  their  own  minds.  It  says  volumes  for 
Hugh  Flaxman's  general  capacities  as  a  human  being  that  at 


CHAP.  XLV  NEW  OPENINGS  539 

this  period  he  should  have  had  any  attention  to  give  to  a  friend, 
his  position  as  a  lover  was  so  dubious  and  difficult. 

After  the  evening  at  the  Workmen's  Club,  and  as  a  result  of 
further  meditation,  he  had  greatly  developed  the  tactics  first 
adopted  on  that  occasion.  He  had  beaten  a  masterly  retreat, 
and  Rose  Leyburn  was  troubled  with  him  no  more. 

The  result  was  that  a  certain  brilliant  young  person  was 
soon  sharply  conscious  of  a  sudden  drop  in  the  pleasures  of 
living.  Mr.  Flaxman  had  been  the  Leyburns'  most  constant 
and  entertaining  visitor.  During  the  whole  of  May  he  paid 
one  formal  call  in  Lerwick  Gardens,  and  was  then  entertained 
tete-a-tete  by  Mrs.  Leyburn,  to  Rose's  intense  subsequent  annoy- 
ance, who  knew  perfectly  well  that  her  mother  was  incapable 
of  chattering  about  anything  but  her  daughters. 

He  still  sent  flowers,  but  they  came  from  his  head  gardener, 
addressed  to  Mrs.  Leyburn.  Agnes  put  them  in  water;  and 
Rose  never  gave  them  a  look.  Rose  went  to  Lady  Helen's 
because  Lady  Helen  made  her,  and  was  much  too  engaging  a 
creature  to  be  rebuffed;  but,  however  merry  and  protracted 
the  teas  in  those  scented  rooms  might  be,  Mr.  Flaxman's  step 
on  the  stairs,  and  Mr.  Flaxman's  hand  on  the  curtain  over  the 
door,  till  now  the  feature  -in  the  entertainment  most  to  be 
counted  on,  were,  generally  speaking,  conspicuously  absent. 

He  and  the  Leyburns  met,  of  course ;  for  their  list  of  common 
friends  was  now  considerable ;  but  Agnes,  reporting  matters  to 
Catherine,  could  only  say  that  each  of  these  occasions  left  Rose 
more  irritable,  and  more  inclined  to  say  biting  things  as  to  the 
foolish  ways  in  which  society  takes  its  pleasures. 

Rose  certainly  was  irritable,  and  at  times,  Agnes  thought, 
depressed.  But  as  usual  she  was  unapproachable  about  her 
own  affairs,  and  the  state  of  her  mind  could  only  be  somewhat 
dolefully  gathered  from  the  fact  that  she  was  much  less  unwill- 
ing to  go  back  to  Burwood  this  summer  than  had  ever  been 
known  before. 

Meanwhile,  Mr.  Flaxman  left  certain  other  people  in  no 
doubt  as  to  his  intentions. 

'  My  dear  aunt,'  he  said  calmly  to  Lady  Charlotte,  '  I  mean 
to  marry  Miss  Leyburn  if  I  can  at  any  time  persuade  her  to 
have  me.  So  much  you  may  take  as  fixed,  and  it  will  be  quite 
waste  of  breath  on  your  part  to  quote  dukes  to  me.  But  the 
other  factor  in  the  problem  is  by  no  means  fixed.  Miss  Leyburn 
won't  have  me  at  present,  and  as  for  the  future  I  have  most 
salutary  qualms.' 

'  Hugh  ! '  interrupted  Lady  Charlotte  angrily,  '  as  if  you 
hadn't  had  the  mothers  of  London  at  your  feet  for  years  ! ' 

Lady  Charlotte  was  in  a  most  variable  frame  of  mind  ;  one 
day  hoping  devoutly  that  the  Langham  affair  might  prove  last- 
ing enough  in  its  effects  to  tire  Hugh  out ;  the  next,  outraged 
that  a  silly  girl  should  waste  a  thought  on  such  a  creature, 
while  Hugh  was  in  her  way ;  at  one  time  angry  that  an 


540  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

insignificant  chit  of  a  schoolmaster's  daughter  should  apparently 
care  so  little  to  be  the  Duke  of  Sedbergh's  niece,  and  should 
even  dare  to  allow  herself  the  luxury  of  snubbing  a  Flaxman  ; 
at  another,  utterly  sceptical  as  to  any  lasting  obduracy  on  the 
chit's  part.  The  girl  was  clearly  anxious  not  to  fall  too  easily, 
but  as  to  final  refusal — pshaw !  And  it  made  her  mad  that 
Hugh  would  hold  himself  so  cheap. 

Meanwhile,  Mr.  Flaxman  felt  himself  in  no  way  called  upon 
to  answer  that  remark  of  his  aunt's  we  have  recorded. 

'  I  have  qualms,'  he  repeated,  '  but  I  mean  to  do  all  I  know, 
and  you  and  Helen  must  help  me.' 

Lady  Charlotte  crossed  her  hands  before  her. 

'  I  may  be  a  Liberal  and  a  lion-hunter,'  she  said  firmly,  '  but 
I  have  still  conscience  enough  left  not  to  aid  and  abet  my 
nephew  in  throwing  himself  away.' 

She  had  nearly  slipped  in  '  again ' ;  but  just  saved  herself. 

'Your  conscience  is  all  a  matter  of  the  Duke,'  he  told  her. 
'  Well,  if  you  won't  help  me,  then  Helen  and  I  will  have  to 
arrange  it  by  ourselves.' 

But  this  did  not  suit  Lady  Charlotte  at  all.  She  had  always 
played  the  part  of  earthly  providence  to  this  particular  nephew, 
and  it  was  abominable  to  her  that  the  wretch,  having  refused 
for  ten  years  to  provide  her  with  a  love  affair  to  manage,  should 
now  manage  one  for  himself  in  spite  of  her. 

'  You  are  such  an  arbitrary  creature  ! '  she  said  fretfully ; 
'  you  prance  about  the  world  like  Don  Quixote,  and  expect  me 
to  play  Sancho  without  a  murmur.' 

'  How  many  drubbings  have  I  brought  you  yet  ? '  he  asked 
her  laughing.  He  was  really  very  fond  of  her.  'It  is  true 
there  is  a  point  of  likeness ;  I  won't  take  your  advice.  But 
then  why  don't  you  give  me  better  ?  It  is  strange,'  he  added 
musing ;  '  women  talk  to  us  about  love  as  if  we  were  too  gross 
to  understand  it ;  and  when  they  come  to  business,  and  they're 
not  in  it  themselves,  they  show  the  temper  of  attorneys.' 

'  Love  ! '  cried  Lady  Charlotte  nettled.  '  Do  you  mean  to 
tell  me,  Hugh,  that  you  are  really,  seriously  in  love  with  that 
girl?' 

'  Well,  I  only  know,'  he  said,  thrusting  his  hands  far  into  his 
pockets,  '  that  unless  things  mend  I  shall  go  out  to  California 
in  the  autumn  and  try  ranching.' 

Lady  Charlotte  burst  into  an  angry  laugh.  He  stood  opposite 
to  her,  with  his  orchid  in  his  buttonhole,  himself  the  fine  flower 
of  civilisation.  Ranching,  indeed !  However,  he  had  done  so 
many  odd  things  in  his  life,  that,  as  she  knew,  it  was  never 
quite  safe  to  decline  to  take  him  seriously,  and  he  looked  at  her 
now  so  defiantly,  his  clear  greenish  eyes  so  wide  open  and  alert, 
that  her  will  began  to  waver  under  the  pressure  of  his. 

'  What  do  you  want  me  to  do,  sir  ? ' 

His  glance  relaxed  at  once,  and  he  laughingly  explained  to 
her  that  what  he  asked  of  her  was  to  keep  the  prey  in  sight. 


CHAP.  XLV  NEW  OPENINGS  541 

'  I  can  do  nothing  for  myself  at  present,'  he  said  ;  '  I  get  on 
her  nerves.  She  was  in  love  with  that  black-haired  enfant  du 
siecle, — or  rather,  she  prefers  to  assume  that  she  was — and  I 
haven't  given  her  time  to  forget  him.  A  serious  blunder, 
and  I  deserve  to  suffer  for  it.  very  well,  then,  I  retire,  and 
I  ask  you  and  Helen  to  keep  watch.  Don't  let  her  go.  Make 
yourselves  nice  to  her  :  and,  in  fact,  spoil  me  a  little  now  I 
am  on  the  high  road  to  .forty,  as  you  used  to  spoil  me  at 
fourteen.' 

Mr.  Flaxman  sat  down  by  his  aunt  and  kissed  her  hand,  after 
which  Lady  Charlotte  was  as  wax  before  him.  '  Thank  heaven,' 
she  reflected,  '  in  ten  days  the  Duke  and  all  of  them  go  out  of 
town.'  Retribution,  therefore,  for  wrong-doing  would  be  tardy, 
if  wrong-doing  there  must  be.  She  could  but  ruefully  reflect 
that  after  all  the  girl  was  beautiful  and  gifted  ;  moreover,  if 
Hugh  would  force  her  to  befriend  him  in  this  criminality,  there 
might  be  a  certain  joy  in  thereby  vindicating  those  Liberal 
principles  of  hers,  in  which  a  scornful  family  had  always  refused 
to  believe.  So,  being  driven  into  it,  she  would  fain  have  done 
it  boldly  and  with  a  dash.  But  she  could  not  rid  her  mind  of 
the  Duke,  and  her  performance  all  through,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
was  blundering. 

However,  she  was  for  the  time  very  gracious  to  Rose,  being 
in  truth  really  fond  of  her  ;  and  Rose,  however  high  she  might 
hold  her  little  head,  could  find  no  excuse  for  quarrelling  either 
with  her  or  Lady  Helen. 

Towards  the  middle  of  June  there  was  a  grand  ball  given  by 
Lady  Fauntleroy  at  Fauntleroy  House,  to  which  the  two  Miss 
Leyburns,  by  Lady  Helen's  machinations,  were  invited.  It 
was  to  be  one  of  the  events  of  the  season,  and  when  the  cards 
arrived  '  to  have  the  honour  of  meeting  their  Royal  Highnesses/ 
etc.  etc.,  Mrs.  Leyburn,  good  soul,  gazed  at  them  with  eyes 
which  grew  a  little  moist  under  her  spectacles.  She  wished 
Richard  could  have  seen  the  girls  dressed,  'just  once.'  But 
Rose  treated  the  cards  with  no  sort  of  tenderness.  'If  one 
could  but  put  them  up  to  auction,'  she  said  flippajitly,  holding 
them  up,  'how  many  German  opera  tickets  I  should  get  for 
nothing  !  I  don't  know  what  Agnes  feels.  As  for  me,  I  have 
neither  nerve  enough  for  the  people,  nor  money  enough  for  the 
toilette.' 

However,  with  eleven  o'clock  Lady  Helen  ran  in,  a  fresh 
vision  of  blue  and  white,  to  suggest  certain  dresses  for  the 
sisters  which  had  occurred  to  her  in  the  visions  of  the  night, 
'  original,  adorable, — cost,  a  mere  nothing  ! ' 

'  My  harpy,'  she  remarked,  alluding  to  her  dressmaker, '  would 
ruin  you  over  them,  of  course.  Your  maid' — the  Leyburns 
possessed  a  remarkably  clever  one — '  will  make  them  divinely 
for  twopence-halfpenny.  Listen.' 

Rose  listened  ;  her  eye  kindled ;  the  maid  was  summoned  ; 
and  the  invitation  accepted  in  Agnes's  neatest  hand.  Even 


542  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

Catherine  was  roused  during  the  following  ten  days  to  a  smiling 
indulgent  interest  in  the  concerns  of  the  workroom. 

The  evening  came,  and  Lady  Helen  fetched  the  sisters  in  her 
carriage.  The  ball  was  a  magnificent  affair.  The  house  was 
one  of  historical  interest  and  importance,  and  all  that  the 
ingenuity  of  the  present  could  do  to  give  fresh  life  and  gaiety 
to  the  pillared  rooms,  the  carved  galleries  and  stately  staircases 
of  the  past,  had  been  done.  The  ball-room,  lined  with  Vandycks 
and  Lelys,  glowed  softly  with  electric  light ;  the  picture  gallery 
had  been  banked  with  flowers  and  carpeted  with  red,  and  the 
beautiful  dresses  of  the  women  trailed  up  and  down  it,  challeng- 
ing the  satins  of  the  Netschers  and  the  Terburgs  on  the  walls. 

Rose's  card  was  soon  full  to  overflowing.  The  young  men 
present  were  of  the  smartest,  and  would  not  willingly  have 
bowed  the  knee  to  a  nobody,  however  pretty.  But  Lady 
Helen's  devotion,  the  girl's  reputation  as  a  musician,  and  her 
little  nonchalant  disdainful  ways,  gave  her  a  kind  of  prestige, 
which  made  her,  for  the  time  being  at  any  rate,  the  equal  of 
anybody.  Petitioners  came  and  went  away  empty.  Royalty 
was  introduced,  and  smiled  both  upon  the  beauty  and  the 
beauty's  delicate  and  becoming  dress ;  and  still  Rose,  though  a 
good  deal  more  flushed  and  erect  than  usual,  and  though  flesh 
and  blood  could  not  resist  the  contagious  pleasure  which 
glistened  even  in  the  eyes  of  that  sage  Agnes,  was  more  than 
half -inclined  to  say  with  the  Preacher,  that  all  was  vanity. 

Presently,  as  she  stood  waiting  with  her  hand  on  her 
partner's  arm  before  gliding  into  a  waltz,  she  saw  Mr.  Flaxman 
opposite  to  her,  and  with  him  a  young  debutante  in  white  tulle 
— a  thin,  pretty,  undeveloped  creature,  whose  sharp  elbows  and 
timid  movements,  together  with  the  blushing  enjoyment  glow- 
ing so  frankly  from  her  face,  pointed  her  out  as  the  school-girl 
of  sweet  seventeen,  just  emancipated,  and  trying  her  wings. 
SK-.  'Ah,  there  is  Lady  Florence  !'  said  her  partner,  a  handsome 
young  Hussar.  'This  ball  is  in  her  honour,  you  know.  She 
comes  out  to-night.  What,  another  cousin  ?  Really  she  keeps 
too  much  in  the  family  ! ' 

'  Is  Mr.  Flaxman  a  cousin  ? ' 

The  young  man  replied  that  he  was,  and  then,  in  the  intervals 
of  waltzing,  went  on  to  explain  to  her  the  relationships  of  many 
of  the  people  present,  till  the  whole  gorgeous  affair  began  to 
seem  to  Rose  a  mere  family  party.  Mr.  Flaxman  was  of  it. 
She  was  not. 

'  Why  am  I  here  ? '  the  little  Jacobin  said  to  herself  fiercely 
as  she  waltzed  ;  '  it  is  foolish,  unprofitable.  I  do  not  belong  to 
them,  nor  they  to  me  ! ' 

'  Miss  Leyburn  !  charmed  to  see  you  ! '  cried  Lady  Charlotte, 
stopping  her ;  and  then,  in  a  loud  whisper  in  her  ear,  '  Never 
saw  you  look  better.  Your  taste,  or  Helen's,  that  dress  ?  The 
roses — exquisite  ! ' 

Rose  dropped  her  a  little  mock  curtsey  and  whirled  on  again. 


CHAP.  XLV  NEW  OPENINGS  543 

'  Lady  Florences  are  always  well  dressed,'  thought  the  child 
angrily  ;  '  and  who  notices  it  ? ' 

Another  turn  brought  them  against  Mr.  Flaxman  and  his 
partner.  Mr.  Flaxman  came  at  once  to  greet  her  with  smiling 
courtesy. 

'  I  have  a  Cambridge  friend  to  introduce  to  you — a  beautiful 
youth.  Shall  I  find  you  by  Helen?  Now,  Lady  Florence, 
patience  a  moment.  That  corner  is  too  crowded.  How  good 
that  last  turn  was  ! ' 

And  bending  with  a  sort  of  kind  chivalry  over  his  partner, 
who  looked  at  him  with  the  eyes  of  a  joyous  excited  child,  he 
led  her  away.  Five  minutes  later  Rose,  standing  flushed  by 
Lady  Helen,  saw  him  coming  again  towards  her,  ushering  a  tall 
blue-eyed  youth,  whom  he  introduced  to  her  as  '  Lord  Waynflete.' 
The  handsome  boy  looked  at  her  with  a  boy's  open  admiration, 
and  beguiled  her  of  a  supper  dance,  while  a  group  standing 
near,  a  mother  and  three  daughters,  stood  watching  with  cold 
eyes  and  expressions  which  said  plainly  to  the  initiated  that 
mere  beauty  was  receiving  a  ridiculous  amount  of  attention. 

'I  wouldn't  have  given  it  him,  but  it  is  rude — it  is  bad 
manners,  not  even  to  ask  ! '  the  supposed  victress  was  saying  to 
herself,  with  quivering  lips,  her  eyes  following  not  the  Trinity 
freshman,  who  was  their  latest  captive,  but  an  older  man's  well- 
knit  figure,  and  a  head  on  which  the  fair  hair  was  already  grow- 
ing scantily,  receding  a  little  from  the  fine  intellectual  brows. 

An  hour  later  she  was  again  standing  by  Lady  Helen,  waiting 
for  a  partner,  when  she  saw  two  persons  crossing  the  room, 
which  was  just  beginning  to  fill  again  for  dancing,  towards 
them.  One  was  Mr.  Flaxman,  the  other  was  a  small  wrinkled 
old  man,  who  leant  upon  his  arm,  displaying  the  ribbon  of  the 
Garter  as  he  walked. 

'Dear  me,'  said  Lady  Helen,  a  little  fluttered,  'here  is  my 
uncle  Sedbergh.  I  thought  they  had  left  town.' 

The  pair  approached,  and  the  old  Duke  bowed  over  his  niece's 
hand  with  the  manners  of  a  past  generation. 

'  I  made  Hugh  give  me  an  arm,'  he  said  quaveringly.  '  These 
floors  are  homicidal.  If  I  come  down  on  them  I  shall  bring  an 
action.' 

'  I  thought  you  had  all  left  town  ? '  said  Lady  Helen. 

'  Who  can  make  plans  with  a  Government  in  power  pledged 
to  every  sort  of  villainy  and  public  plunder  ? '  said  the  old  man 
testily.  'I  suppose  Var ley's  there  to-night,  helping  to  vote 
away  my  property  and  Fauntleroy's.' 

'  Some  of  his  own  too,  if  you  please ! '  said  Lady  Helen 
smiling.  '  Yes,  I  suppose  he  is  waiting  for  the  division,  or  he 
would  be  here.' 

'  I  wonder  why  Providence  blessed  me  with  such  a  Radical 
crew  of  relations?'  remarked  the  Duke.  'Hugh  is  a  regular 
Communist.  I  never  heard  such  arguments  in  my  life.  And 
as  for  any  idea  of  standing  by  his  order '  The  old  man 


544  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

shook  his  bald  head  and  shrugged  his  small  shoulders  with 
almost  French  vivacity.  He  had  been  handsome  once,  and 
delicately  featured,  but  now  the  left  eye  drooped,  and  the  face 
had  a  strong  look  of  peevishness  and  ill-health. 

'  Uncle,'  interposed  Lady  Helen,  '  let  me  introduce  you  to  my 
two  great  friends,  Miss  Leyburn,  Miss  Rose  Leyburn.' 

The  Duke  bowed,  looked  at  them  through  a  pair  of  sharp 
eyes,  seemed  to  cogitate  inwardly  whether  such  a  name  had  ever 
been  known  to  him,  and  turned  to  his  nephew. 

'Get  me  out  of  this,  Hugh,  and  I  shall  be  obliged  to  you. 
Young  people  may  risk  it,  but  if  /  broke  I  shouldn't  mend.' 

And  still  grumbling  audibly  about  the  floor,  he  hobbled  oft 
towards  the  picture  gallery.  Mr.  Flaxman  had  only  time  for  a 
smiling  backward  glance  at  Rose. 

'  Have  you  given  my  pretty  boy  a  dance  ? ' 

'  Yes,'  she  said,  but  with  as  much  stiffness  as  she  might  have 
shown  to  his  uncle. 

'  That's  over,'  said  Lady  Helen  with  relief.  '  My  uncle  hardly 
meets  any  of  us  now  without  a  spar.  He  has  never  forgiven 
my  father  for  going  over  to  the  Liberals.  And  then  he  thinks 
we  none  of  us  consult  him  enough.  No  more  we  do — except 
Aunt  Charlotte.  She's  afraid  of  him  ! ' 

'  Lady  Charlotte  afraid  ! '  echoed  Rose. 

'  Odd,  isn't  it  ?  The  Duke  avenges  a  good  many  victims  on 
her,  if  they  only  knew  ! ' 

Lady  Helen  was  called  away,  and  Rose  was  left  standing, 
wondering  what  had  happened  to  her  partner. 

Opposite,  Mr.  Flaxman  was  pushing  through  a  doorway,  and 
Lady  Florence  was  again  on  his  arm.  At  the  same  time  she 
became  conscious  of  a  morsel  of  chaperons'  conversation  such 
as,  by  the  kind  contrivances  of  fate,  a  girl  is  tolerably  sure  to 
hear  under  similar  circumstances. 

The  debutante's  good  looks,  Hugh  Flaxman's  apparent  sus- 
ceptibility to  them,  the  possibility  of  results,  and  the  satis- 
factory disposition  of  the  family  goods  and  chattels  that  would 
be  brought  about  by  such  a  match,  the  opportunity  it  would 
offer  the  man,  too,  of  rehabilitating  himself  socially  after  his 
first  matrimonial  escapade — Rose  caught  fragments  of  all  these 
topics  as  they  were  discussed  by  two  old  ladies,  presumably  also 
of  the  family  '  ring '  who  gossiped  behind  her  with  more  gusto 
than  discretion.  Highmindedness,  of  course,  told  her  to  move 
away ;  something  else  held  her  fast,  till  her  partner  came  up 
for  her. 

Then  she  floated  away  into  the  whirlwind  of  waltzers.  But 
as  she  moved  round  the  room  on  her  partner's  arm,  her  delicate 
half-scornful  grace  attracting  look  after  look,  the  soul  within 
was  all  aflame — aflame  against  the  serried  ranks  and  phalanxes 
of  this  unfamiliar,  hostile  world !  She  had  just  been  reading 
Trevelyan's  Life  of  Fox  aloud  to  her  mother,  who  liked  occa- 
sionally to  flavour  her  knitting  with  literature,  and  she  began 


CHAP.  XLV  NEW  OPENINGS  545 

now  to  revolve  a  passage  from  it,  describing  the  upper  class  of 
the  last  century,  which  had  struck  that  morning  on  her  quick 
retentive  memory:  '"A  few  thousand  people  iv/io  thought  that 
the  world  was  made  for  them  " — did  it  not  run  so  1 — "  and  that  all 
outside  their  own  fraternity  were  unworthy  of  notice  or  criticism, 
bestowed  upon  each  other  an  amount  of  attention  quite  inconceiv- 
able. .  .  .  Within  the  charmed  precincts  there  prevailed  an  easy 
and  natural  mode  of  intercourse,  in  some  respects  singularly 
delightful."  Such,  for  instance,  as  the  Duke  of  Sedbergh  was 
master  of !  Well,  it  was  worth  while,  perhaps,  to  have  gained 
an  experience,  even  at  the  expense  of  certain  illusions,  as  to  the 
manners  of  dukes,  and — and — as  to  the  constancy  of  friends. 
But  never  again — never  again  ! '  said  the  impetuous  inner  voice. 
'  I  have  my  world — they  theirs  ! ' 

But  why  so  strong  a  flood  of  bitterness  against  our  poor 
upper  class,  so  well  intentioiied  for  all  its  occasional  lack  of 
lucidity,  should  have  arisen  in  so  young  a  breast  it  is  a  little 
difficult  for  the  most  conscientious  biographer  to  explain.  She 
had  partners  to  her  heart's  desire  ;  young  Lord  Waynflete  used 
his  utmost  arts  upon  her  to  persuade  her  that  at  least  half  a 
dozen  numbers  of  the  regular  programme  were  extras  and 
therefore  at  his  disposal ;  and  when  royalty  supped,  it  was 
graciously  pleased  to  ordain  that  Lady  Helen  and  her  two 
companions  should  sup  behind  the  same  folding-doors  as  itself, 
while  beyond  these  doors  surged  the  inferior  c^pwd  of  persons 
who  had  been  specially  invited  to  'meet  their  Hoyal  High- 
nesses,' and  had  so  far  been  held  worthy  neither  to  dance  nor 
to  eat  in  the  same  room  with  them.  But  in  vain.  Rose  still 
felt  herself,  for  all  her  laughing  outward  insouciance,  a  poor, 
bruised,  helpless  chattel,  trodden  under  the  heel  of  a  world 
which  was  intolerably  powerful,  rich,  and  self-satisfied,  the 
odious  product  of  '  family  arrangements.' 

Mr.  Flaxman  sat  far  away  at  the  same  royal  table  as  herself. 
Beside  him  was  the  thin  tall  debutante.  '  She  is  like  one  of  the 
Gainsborough  princesses,'  thought  Rose,  studying  her  with 
involuntary  admiration.  'Of  course  it  is  all  plain.  He  will 
get  everything  he  wants,  and  a  Lady  Florence  into  the  bargain. 
Radical,  indeed  !  What  nonsense  ! ' 

Then  it  startled  her  to  find  that  the  eyes  of  Lady  Florence's 
neighbour  were,  as  it  seemed,  on  herself ;  or  was  he  merely 
nodding  to  Lady  Helen  ? — and  she  began  immediately  to  give  a 
smiling  attention  to  the  man  on  her  left. 

An  hour  later  she  and  Agnes  and  Lady  Helen  were  descend- 
ing the  great  staircase  on  their  way  to  their  carriage.  The 
morning  light  was  flooding  through  the  chinks  of  the  carefully 
veiled  windows;  Lady  Helen  was  yawning  behind  her  tiny 
white  hand,  her  eyes  nearly  asleep.  But  the  two  sisters,  who 
had  not  been  up  till  three,  on  four  preceding  nights,  like  their 
chaperon,  were  still  almost  as  fresh  as  the  flowers  massed  in  the 
hall  below. 

2N 


546  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

'  Ah,  there  is  Hugh-! '  cried  Lady  Helen.  '  How  I  hope  he  has 
found  the  carriage  ! ' 

At  that  moment  Rose  slipped  on  a  spray  of  gardenia,  which 
had  dropped  from  the  bouquet  of  some  predecessor.  To  pre- 
vent herself  from  falling  downstairs,  she  caught  hold  of  the 
stem  of  a  brazen  chandelier  fixed  in  the  balustrade.  It  saved 
her,  but  she  gave  her  arm  a  most  painful  wrench,  and  leant 
limp  and  white  against  the  railing  of  the  stairs.  Lady  Helen 
turned  at  Agnes's  exclamation,  but  before  she  could  speak,  as  it 
seemed,  Mr.  Flaxman,  who  had  been  standing  talking  just 
below  them,  was  on  the  stairs. 

'  You  have  hurt  your  arm  1  Don't  speak — take  mine.  Let 
me  get  you  downstairs  out  of  the  crush.' 

She  was  too  far  gone  to  resist,  and  when  she  was  mistress  of 
herself  again  she  found  herself  in  the  library  with  some  water 
in  her  hand  which  Mr.  Flaxman  had  just  put  there. 

'  Is  it  the  playing  hand  ? '  said  Lady  Helen  anxiously. 

'  No,'  said  Rose,  trying  to  laugh  ;  '  the  bowing  elbow.'  And 
she  raised  it,  but  with  a  contortion  of  pain. 

'Don't  raise  it,'  he  said  peremptorily.  'We  will  have  a 
doctor  here  in  a  moment,  and  have  it  bandaged.' 

He  disappeared.  Rose  tried  to  sit  up,  seized  with  a  frantic 
longing  to  disobey  him,  and  get  off  before  he  returned.  Sting- 
ing the  girl's  mind  was  the  sense  that  it  might  all  perfectly  well 
seem  to  him  a  planned  appeal  to  his  pity. 

'  Agnes,  help  me  up,'  she  said  with  a  little  involuntary  groan ; 
'  I  shall  be  better  at  home.' 

But  both  Lady  Helen  and  Agnes  laughed  her  to  scorn,  and 
she  lay  back  once  more  overwhelmed  by  fatigue  and  faintness. 
A  few  more  minutes,  and  a  doctor  appeared,  caught  by  good 
luck  in  the  next  street.  He  pronounced  it  a  severe  muscular 
strain,  but  nothing  more ;  applied  a  lotion  and  improvised  a 
sling.  Rose  consulted  him  anxiously  as  to  the  interference 
with  her  playing. 

'  A  week,'  he  said  ;  '  no  more,  if  you  are  careful.' 

Her  pale  face  brightened.  Her  art  had  seemed  specially 
dear  to  her  of  late. 

'  Hugh  ! '  called  Lady  Helen,  going  to  the  door.  '  Now  we  are 
ready  for  the  carriage. 

Rose  leaning  on  Agnes  walked  out  into  the  hall.  They 
found  him  there  waiting. 

'  The  carriage  is  here,'  he  said,  bending  towards  her  with  a 
look  and  tone  which  so  stirred  the  fluttered  nerves,  that  the 
sense  of  faintness  stole  back  upon  her.  'Let  me  take  you 
to  it.' 

'  Thank  you,'  she  said  coldly,  but  by  a  superhuman  effort ; 
'  my  sister's  help  is  quite  enough.' 

He  followed  them  with  Lady  Helen.  At  the  carriage  door 
the  sisters  hesitated  a  moment.  Rose  was  helpless  without  a 
right  hand.  A  little  imperative  movement  from  behind  dis- 


CHAP.  XLV  NEW  OPENINGS  547 

placed  Agnes,  and  Rose  felt  herself  hoisted  in  by  a  strong  arm. 
She  sank  into  the  farther  corner.  The  glow  of  the  dawn  caught 
her  white  delicate  features,  the  curls  on  her  temples,  all  the 
silken  confusion  of  her  dress.  Hugh  Flaxman  put  in  Agnes 
and  his  sister,  said  something  to  Agnes  about  coming  to  inquire, 
and  raised  his  hat.  Rose  caught  the  quick  force  and  intensity 
of  his  eyes,  and  then  closed  her  own,  lost  in  a  languid  swoon  of 
pain,  memory,  and  resentful  wonder. 

Flaxman  walked  away  down  Park  Lane  through  the  chill 
morning  quietness,  the  gathering  light  striking  over  the  houses 
beside  him  on  to  the  misty  stretches  of  the  Park.  His  hat  was 
over  his  eyes,  his  hands  thrust  into  his  pockets  ;  a  close  observer 
would  have  noticed  a  certain  trembling  of  the  lips.  It  was  but 
a  few  seconds  since  her  young  warm  beauty  had  been  for  an 
instant  in  his  arms ;  his  whole  being  was  shaken  by  it,  and  by 
that  last  look  of  hers.  '  Have  I  gone  too  far  ? '  he  asked  himself 
anxiously.  'Is  it  divinely  true — already — that  she  resents 
being  left  to  herself  ?  Oh,  little  rebel !  You  tried  your  best 
not  to  let  me  see.  But  you  were  angry,  you  were  !  Now,  then, 
how  to  proceed  ?  She  is  all  fire,  all  character ;  I  rejoice  in  it. 
She  will  give  me  trouble  ;  so  much  the  better.  Poor  little  hurt 
thing !  the  fight  is  only  beginning ;  but  I  will  make  her  do 
penance  some  day  for  all  that  loftiness  to-night.' 

If  these  reflections  betray  to  the  reader  a  certain  masterful 
note  of  confidence  in  Mr.  Flaxman's  mind,  he  will  perhaps  find 
small  cause  to  regret  that  Rose  did  give  him  a  great  deal  of 
trouble. 

Nothing  could  have  been  more  'salutary,'  to  use  his  own 
word,  than  the  dance  she  led  him  during  the  next  three  weeks. 
She  provoked  him  indeed  at  moments  so  much  that  he  was  a 
hundred  times  on  the  point  of  trying  to  seize  his  kingdom  of 
.heaven  by  violence,  of  throwing  himself  upon  her  with  a  tem- 
pest shock  of  reproach  and  appeal.  But  some  secret  instinct 
restrained  him.  She  was  wilful,  she  was  capricious  ;  she  had  a 
real  and  powerful  distraction  in  her  art.  He  must  be  patient 
and  risk  nothing. 

He  suspected,  too,  what  was  the  truth — that  Lady  Charlotte 
was  doing  harm.  Rose,  indeed,  had  grown  so  touchily  sensitive 
that  she  found  offence  in  almost  every  word  of  Lady  Charlotte's 
about  her  nephew.  Why  should  the  apparently  casual  remarks 
of  the  aunt  bear  so  constantly  on  the  subject  of  the  nephew's 
social  importance  ?  Rose  vowed  to  herself  that  she  needed  no 
reminder  of  that  station  whereunto  it  had  pleased  God  to  call 
her,  and  that  Lady  Charlotte  might  spare  herself  all  those 
anxieties  and  reluctances  which  the  girl's  quick  sense  detected, 
in  spite  of  the  invitations  so  freely  showered  on  Lerwick 
Gardens. 

The  end  of  it  all  was  that  Hugh  Flaxman  found  himself 
aq-ain  driven  into  a  corner.  At  the  bottom  of  him  was  still  a 
confidence  that  would  not  yield.  Was  it  possible  that  he  had 


548  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vi 

ever  given  her  some  tiny  involuntary  glimpse  of  it,  and  that 
but  for  that  glimpse  she  would  have  let  him  make  his  peace 
much  more  easily  ?  At  any  rate,  now  he  felt  himself  at  the  end 
of  his  resources. 

'I  must  change  the  venue,'  he  said  to  himself  ;  'decidedly  I 
must  change  the  venue.' 

So  by  the  end  of  June  he  had  accepted  an  invitation  to  fish 
in  Norway  with  a  friend,  and  was  gone.  Rose  received  the 
news  with  a  callousness  which  made  even  Lady  Helen  want  to 
shake  her. 

On  the  eve  of  his  journey,  however,  Hugh  Flaxman  had  at 
last  confessed  himself  to  Catherine  and  Robert.  His  obvious 
plight  made  any  further  scruples  on  their  part  futile,  and  what 
they  had  they  gave  him  in  the  way  of  sympathy.  Also  Robert, 
gathering  that  he  already  knew  much,  and  without  betraying 
any  confidence  of  Rose's,  gave  him  a  hint  or  two  on  the  subject 
of  Langham.  But  more  not  the  friendliest  mortal  could  do  for 
him,  and  Flaxman  went  off  into  exile  announcing  to  a  mocking 
Elsmere  that  lie  should  sit  pensive  on  the  banks  of  Norwegian 
rivers  till  fortune  had  had  time  to  change. 


BOOK  YII 

GAIN    AND    LOSS 


CHAPTER  XLVI 

A  HOT  July  had  well  begun,  but  still  Elsmere  was  toiling  on  in 
Elgood  Street,  and  could  not  persuade  himself  to  think  of  a 
holiday.  Catherine  and  the  child  he  had  driven  away  more 
than  once,  but  the  claims  upon  himself  were  becoming  so  ab- 
sorbing he  did  not  know  how  to  go  even  for  a  few  weeks. 
There  were  certain  individuals  in  particular  who  depended  on 
him  from  day  to  day.  One  was  Charles  Richards's  widow.  The 
poor  desperate  creature  had  put  herself  abjectly  into  Elsmere's 
hands.  He  had  sent  her  to  an  asylum,  where  she  had  been 
kindly  and  skilfully  treated,  and  after  six  weeks'  abstinence  she 
had  just  returned  to  her  children,  and  was  being  watched  by 
himself  and  a  competent  woman  neighbour,  whom  he  had  suc- 
ceeded in  interesting  in  the  case. 

Another  was  a  young  '  secret  springer,'  to  use  the  mysteri- 
ous terms  of  the  trade — Robson  by  name — whom  Elsmere  had 
originally  known  as  a  clever  workman  belonging  to  the  watch- 
making colony,  and  a  diligent  attendant  from  the  beginning  on 
the  Sunday  lectures.  He  was  now  too  ill  to  leave  his  lodgings, 
and  his  sickly  pessimist  personality  had  established  a  special 
hold  on  Robert.  He  was  dying  of  tumour  in  the  throat,  and 
had  become  a  torment  to  hirnseli  and  a  disgust  to  others.  There 
was  a  spark  of  wayward  genius  in  him,  however,  which  enabled 
him  to  bear  his  ills  with  a  mixture  of  savage  humour  and  clear- 
eyed  despair.  In  general  outlook  he  was  much  akin  to  the 
author  or  the  City  of  Dreadful  Night,  whose  poems  he  read  : 
the  loathsome  spectacles  of  London  had  filled  him  with  a  kind 
of  sombre  energy  of  revolt  against  all  that  is.  And  now  that 
he  could  only  work  intermittently,  he  would  sit  brooding  for 
hours,  startling  the  fellow-workmen  who  came  in  to  see  him 
with  ghastly  Heine-like  jokes  on  his  own  hideous  disease,  living 
no  one  exactly  knew  how,  though  it  was  supposed  on  supplies 
sent  him  by  a  shopkeeper  uncle  in  the  country,  and  constantly 
on  the  verge,  as  all  his  acquaintances  felt,  of  some  ingenious 
expedient  or  other  for  putting  an  end  to  himself  and  his 
troubles.  He  was  unmarried,  and  a  misogynist  to  boot.  No 
woman  willingly  went  near  him,  and  he  tended  himself.  How 
Robert  had  gained  any  hold  upon  him  no  one  could  guess.  But 


552  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vir 

from  the  moment  when  Elsmere,  struck  in  the  lecture-room  by 
the  pallid  ugly  face  and  swathed  neck,  began  regularly  to  go 
and  see  him,  the  elder  man  felt  instinctively  that  virtue  had 
gone  out  of  him,  and  that  in  some  subtle  way  yet  another  life 
had  become  pitifully,  silently  dependent  on  his  own  stock  of 
strength  and  comfort. 

His  lecturing  and  teaching  work  also  was  becoming  more 
and  more  the  instrument  of  far-reaching  change,  and  therefore 
more  and  more  difficult  to  leave.  The  thoughts  of  God,  the 
image  of  Jesus,  which  were  active  and  fruitful  in  his  own  mind, 
had  been  gradually  passing  from  the  one  into  the  many,  and 
Robert  watched  the  sacred  transforming  emotion,  once  nur- 
tured at  his  own  heart,  now  working  among  the  crowd  of  men 
and  women  his  fiery  speech  had  gathered  round  him,  with  a 
trembling  joy,  a  humble  prostration  of  the  soul  before  the 
Eternal  Truth,  no  words  can  fitly  describe.  With  an  ever-in- 
creasing detachment  of  mind  from  the  objects  of  self  and  sense, 
he  felt  himself  a  tool  in  the  Great  Workman's  hand.  '  Accom- 
plish Thy  purposes  in  me,'  was  the  cry  of  his  whole  heart  and 
life;  'use  me  to  the  utmost;  spend  every  faculty  I  have,  O 
"  Thou  who  mouldest  men  "  ! ' 

But  in  the  end  his  work  itself  drove  him  away.  A  certain 
memorable  Saturday  evening  brought  it  about.  It  had  been 
his  custom  of  late  to  spend  an  occasional  evening  hour  after  his 

night-school  work  in  the  North  R Club,  of  which  he  was 

now  by  invitation  a  member.  Here,  in  one  of  the  inner  rooms, 
he  would  stand  against  the  mantelpiece  chatting,  smoking  often 
with  the  men.  Everything  came  up  in  turn  to  be  discussed  ; 
aud  Robert  was  at  least  as  ready  to  learn  from  the  practical 
workers  about  him  as  to  teach.  But  in  general  these  informal 
talks  and  debates  became  the  supplement  of  the  Sunday  lec- 
tures. Here  he  met  Andrews  and  the  Secularist  crew  face  to 
face  ;  here  he  grappled  in  Socratic  fashion  with  objections  and 
difficulties,  throwing  into  the  task  all  his  charm  and  all  his 
knowledge,  a  man  at  once  of  no  pretensions  and  of  unfailing 
natural  dignity.  Nothing,  so  far,  had  served  his  cause  and  his 
influence  so  well  as  these  moments  of  free  discursive  inter- 
course. The  mere  orator,  the  mere  talker,  indeed,  would  never 
have  gained  any  permanent  hold ;  but  the  life  behind  gave 
weight  to  every  acute  or  eloquent  word,  and  importance  even 
to  those  mere  sallies  of  a  boyish  enthusiasm  which  were  still 
common  enough  in  him. 

He  had  already  visited  the  club  once  during  the  week  pre- 
ceding this  Saturday.  On  both  occasions  there  was  much  talk 
of  the  growing  popularity  and  efficiency  of  the  Elgood  Street 
work,  of  the  numbers  attending  the  lectures,  the  story-telling, 
the  Sunday  school,  and  of  the  way  in  which  the  attractions  of 
it  had  spread  into  other  quarters  of  the  parish,  exciting  there, 
especially  among  the  clergy  of  St.  Wilfrid's,  an  anxious  and 
critical  attention.  The  conversation  on  Saturday  night,  how- 


CIIAK  XLVI  GAIN  AND  LOSS  553 

ever,  took  a  turn  of  its  own.  Robert  felt  in  it  a  new  and 
curious  note  of  responsibility/.  The  men  present  were  evidently 
beginning  to  regard  the  work  as  their  work  also,  and  its  success 
as  their  interest.  It  was  perfectly  natural,  for  not  only  had 
most  of  them  been  his  supporters  and  hearers  from  the  begin- 
ning, but  some  of  them  were  now  actually  teaching  in  the 
night-school  or  helping  in  the  various  branches  of  the  large  and 
overflowing  boys'  club.  He  listened  to  them  for  a  while  in  his 
favourite  attitude,  leaning  against  the  mantelpiece,  throwing 
in  a  word  or  two  now  and  then  as  to  how  this  or  that  part  of 
the  work  might  be  amended  or  expanded.  Then  suddenly  a 
kind  of  inspiration  seemed  to  pass  from  them  to  him.  Bending 
forward  as  the  talk  dropped  a  moment,  he  asked  them,  with  an 
accent  more  emphatic  than  usual,  whether  in  view  of  this  colla- 
boration of  theirs,  which  was  becoming  more  valuable  to  him 
and  his  original  helpers  every  week,  it  was  not  time  for  a  new 
departure. 

'  Suppose  I  drop  my  dictatorship,'  he  said,  '  suppose  we  set 
up  parliamentary  government,  are  you  ready  to  take  your 
share  1  Are  you  ready  to  combine,  to  commit  yourselves  ?  Are 
you  ready  for  an  effort  to  turn  this  work  into  something  lasting 
and  organic  ? ' 

The  men  gathered  round  him  smoked  on  in  silence  for  a 
minute.  Old  Macdonald,  who  had  been  sitting  contentedly 
puffing  away  in  a  corner  peculiarly  his  own,  and  dedicated  to 
the  glorification — in  broad  Berwickshire — of  the  experimental 
philosophers,  laid  down  his  pipe  and  put  on  his  spectacles,  that 
he  might  grasp  the  situation  better.  Then  Lestrange,  in  a 
dry  cautious  way,  asked  Elsmere  to  explain  himself  further. 

Robert  began  to  pace  up  and  down,  talking  out  his  thought, 
his  eye  kindling. 

But  in  a  minute  or  two  he  stopped  abruptly,  with  one  of 
those  striking  rapid  gestures  characteristic  of  him. 

'  But  no  mere  social  and  educational  body,  mind  you  ! '  and 
his  bright  commanding  look  swept  round  the  circle.  'A  good 
thing  surely,  "  yet  is  there  better  than  it."  The  real  difficulty 
of  every  social  effort — you  know  it  and  I  know  it — lies,  not  in 
the  planning  of  the  work,  but  in  the  kindling  of  will  and  pas- 
sion enough  to  carry  it  through.  And  that  can  only  be  done  by 
religion — by  faith.' 

He  went  back  to  his  old  leaning  attitude,  his  hands  behind 
him.  The  men  gazed  at  him — at  the  slim  figure,  the  transparent 
changing  face — with  a  kind  of  fascination,  but  were  still  silent, 
till  Macdonald  said  slowly,  taking  off  his  glasses  again  and 
dealing  his  throat — 

'You'll  be  aboot  starrtin'  a  new  church,  I'm  thinkin',  Misther 
Elsmere  1 ' 

'  If  you  like,'  said  Robert  impetuously.  '  I  have  no  fear  of 
the  great  words.  You  can  do  nothing  by  despising  the  past 
and  its  products  ;  you  can  also  do  nothing  by  being  too  much 


554  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

afraid  of  them,  by  letting  them  choke  and  stifle  your  own  life. 
Let  the  new  wine  have  its  new  bottles  if  it  must,  and  never 
mind  words.  Be  content  to  be  a  new  "  sect,"  "  conventicle,"  or 
what  not,  so  long  as  you  feel  that  you  are  something  with  a  life 
and  purpose  of  its  own,  in  this  tangle  of  a  world.' 

Again  he  paused  with  knit  brows,  thinking.  Lestrange  sat 
with  his  elbows  on  his  knees  studying  him,  the  spare  gray  hair 
brushed  back  tightly  from  the  bony  face,  on  the  lips  the  slightest 
Voltairean  smile.  Perhaps  it  was  the  coolness  of  his  look  which 
insensibly  influenced  Robert's  next  words. 

'  However,  I  don't  imagine  we  should  call  ourselves  a  church  ! 
Something  much  humbler  will  do,  if  you  choose  ever  to  make 
anything  of  these  suggestions  of  mine.  "  Association,"  "  society," 
"  brotherhood,"  what  you  will !  But  always,  if  I  can  persuade 
you,  with  something  in  the  name,  and  everything  in  the  body 
itself,  to  show  that  for  the  members  of  it  life  rests  still,  as  all 
life  worth  having  has  everywhere  rested  on  trust  and  memory  ! 
— trust  in  the  God  of  experience  and  history  ;  memory  of  that 
God's  work  in  man,  by  which  alone  we  know  Him  and  can 
approach  Him.  Well,  of  that  work — I  have  tried  to  prove  it  to 
you  a  thousand  times — Jesus  of  Nazareth  has  become  to  us,  by 
the  evolution  of  circumstance,  the  most  moving,  the  most  effi- 
cacious of  all  types  and  epitomes.  We  have  made  our  protest 
— we  are  daily  making  it — in  the  face  of  society,  against  the 
fictions  and  overgrowths  which  at  the  present  time  are  exclud- 
ing him  more  and  more  from  human  love.  But  now,  suppose 
we  turn  our  backs  on  negation,  and  have  done  with  mere 
denial !  Suppose  we  throw  all  our  energies  into  the  practical 
building  of  a  new  house  of  faith,  the  gathering  and  organising 
of  a  new  Company  of  Jesus  ! ' 

Other  men  had  been  stealing  in  while  he  was  speaking.  The 
little  room  was  nearly  full.  It  was  strange,  the  contrast  be- 
tween the  squalid  modernness  of  the  scene,  with  its  incongruous 
sights  and  sounds,  the  Club-room,  painted  in  various  hideous 
shades  of  cinnamon  and  green,  the  smoke,  the  lines  and  groups 
of  working-men  in  every  sort  of  working  dress,  the  occasional 
rumbling  of  huge  waggons  past  the  window,  the  click  of  glasses 
and  cups  in  the  refreshment  bar  outside,  and  this  stir  of  spiritual 
passion  which  any  competent  observer  might  have  felt  sweeping 
through  the  little  crowd  as  Robert  spoke,  connecting  what  was 
passing  there  with  all  that  is  sacred  and  beautiful  in  the  history 
of  the  world. 

After  another  silence  a  young  fellow,  in  a  shabby  velvet  coat, 
stood  up.  He  was  commonly  known  among  his  fellow-potters 
as  '  the  hartist,'  because  of  his  long  hair,  his  little  affectations 
of  dress,  and  his  aesthetic  susceptibilities  generally.  The  wits 
of  the  Club  made  him  their  target,  but  the  teasing  of  him  that 
went  on  was  more  or  less  tempered  by  the  knowledge  that 
in  his  own  queer  way  he  had  brought  up  and  educated  two 
young  sisters  almost  from  infancy,  and  that  his  sweetheart 


CHAP.  XLVI  GAIN  AND  LOSS  555 

had  been  killed  before  his  eyes  a  year  before  in  a  railway  acci- 
dent. 

•  I  dun  know/  he  said  in  a  high  treble  voice,  '  I  dun  know 
whether  I  speak  for  anybody  but  myself — very  likely  not ;  but 
what  I  do  know,'  and  he  raised  his  right  hand  and  shook  it  with 
a  gesture  of  curious  felicity,  '  is  this — what  Mr.  Elsmere  starts 
I'D.  join  ;  where  he  goes  I'll  go  ;  what's  good  enough  for  him's 
good  enough  for  me.  He's  put  a  new  heart  and  a  new  stomach 
into  me,  and  what  I've  got  he  shall  have,  whenever  it  pleases 
'im  to  call  for  it !  So  if  he  wants  to  run  a  new  thing  against 
or  alongside  the  old  uns,  and  he  wants  me  to  help  him  with  it 
— I  don  t  know  as  I'm  very  clear  what  he's  driving  at,  nor  what 
good  I  can  do  'im — but  when  Tom  Wheeler's  asked  for  he'll  be 
there ! ' 

A  deep  murmur,  rising  almost  into  a  shout  of  assent  ran 
through  the  little  assembly.  Kobert  bent  forward,  his  eye 
glistening,  a  moved  acknowledgment  in  his  look  and  gesture. 
But  in  reality  a  pang  ran  through  the  fiery  soul.  It  was  'the 
personal  estimate,'  after  all,  that  was  shaping  their  future  and 
his,  and  the  idealist  was  up  in  arms  for  his  idea,  sublimely 
jealous  lest  any  mere  personal  fancy  should  usurp  its  power 
and  place. 

A  certain  amount  of  desultory  debate  followed  as  to  the 
possible  outlines  of  a  possible  organisation,  and  as  to  the  ob- 
servances which  might  be  devised  to  mark  its  religious  character. 
As  it  flowed  on  the  atmosphere  grew  more  and  more  electric. 
A  new  passion,  though  still  timid  and  awestruck,  seemed  to 
shine  from  the  looks  of  the  men  standing  or  sitting  round  the 
central  figure.  Even  Lestrange  lost  his  smile  under  the  pres- 
sure of  that  strange  subdued  expectancy  about  him  ;  and  when 
llobert  walked  homeward,  about  midnight,  there  weighed  upon 
liim  an  almost  awful  sense  of  crisis,  of  an  expanding  future. 

He  let  himself  in  softly  and  went  into  his  study.  There  he 
sank  into  a  chair  and  fainted.  He  was  probably  not  uncon- 
scious verjr  long,  but  after  he  had  struggled  back  to  his  senses, 
and  was  lying  stretched  on  the  sofa  among  the  books  with  which 
it  was  littered,  the  solitary  candle  in  the  big  room  throwing 
weird  shadows  about  him,  a  moment  of  black  depression  over- 
took him.  It  was  desolate  and  terrible,  like  a  prescience  of 
death.  How  was  it  he  had  come  to  feel  so  ill  ?  Suddenly,  as 
he  looked  back  over  the  preceding  weeks,  the  physical  weakness 
and  disturbance  which  nad  marked  them,  and  which  he  had 
struggled  through,  paying  as  little  heed  as  possible,  took  shape, 
spectre-like,  in  his  mind. 

And  at  the  same  moment  a  passionate  rebellion  against 
weakness  and  disablement  arose  in  him.  He  sat  up  dizzily, 
his  head  in  his  hands. 

'  Rest — strength,'  he  said  to  himself,  with  strong  inner  resolve, 
'  for  the  work's  sake  ! ' 

He  dragged  himself  up  to  bed  and  said  nothing  to  Catherine 


556  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

till  the  morning.  Then,  with  boyish  brightness,  he  asked  her  to 
take  him  and  the  babe  off  without  delay  to  the  Norman  coast, 
vowing  that  he  would  lounge  and  idle  for  six  whole  weeks  if  she 
would  let  him.  Shocked  by  his  looks,  she  gradually  got  from  him 
the  story  of  the  night  before.  As  he  told  it,  his  swoon  was  a  mere 
untoward  incident  and  hindrance  in  a  spiritual  drama,  the 
thrill  of  which,  while  he  described  it,  passed  even  to  her.  The 
contrast,  however,  between  the  strong  hopes  she  felt  pulsing 
through  him,  and  his  air  of  fragility  and  exhaustion,  seemed  to 
melt  the  heart  within  her,  and  make  her  whole  being,  she  hardly 
knew  why,  one  sensitive  dread.  She  sat  beside  him,  her  head 
laid  against  his  shoulder,  oppressed  by  a  strange  and  desolate 
sense  of  her  comparatively  small  share  in  this  ardent  life.  In 
spite  of  his  tenderness  and  devotion,  she  felt  often  as  though  he 
were  no  longer  hers— as  though  a  craving  hungry  world,  whose 
needs  were  all  dark  and  unintelligible  to  her,  were  asking  him 
from  her,  claiming  to  use  as  roughly  and  prodigally  as  it  pleased 
the  quick  mind  and  delicate  frame. 

As  to  the  schemes  developing  round  him,  she  could  not  take 
them  in  whether  for  protest  or  sympathy.  She  could  think 
only  of  where  to  go,  what  doctor  to  consult,  how  she  could  per- 
suade him  to  stay  away  long  enough. 

There  was  little  surprise  in  Elgood  Street  when  Elsmere 
announced  that  he  must  go  off  for  a  while.  He  so  announced 
it  that  everybody  who  heard  him  understood  that  his  temporary 
withdrawal  was  to  be  the  mere  preparation  for  a  great  effort — 
the  vigil  before  the  tourney  :  and  the  eager  friendliness  with 
which  he  was  met  sent  him  off  in  good  heart. 

Three  or  four  days  later  he,  Catherine  and  Mary  were  at 
Petites  Dalles,  a  little  place  on  the  Norman  coast,  near  Fecamp, 
with  which  he  had  first  made  acquaintance  years  before,  when 
he  was  at  Oxford. 

Here  all  that  in  London  had  been  oppressive  in  the  August 
heat  suffered  'a  sea  change,'  and  became  so  much  matter  for 
physical  delight.  It  was  fiercely  hot  indeed.  Every  morning, 
between  five  and  six  o'clock,  Catherine  would  stand  by  the 
little  white-veiled  window,  in  the  dewy  silence,  to  watch  the 
eastern  shadows  spreading  sharply  already  into  a  blazing 
world  of  sun,  and  see  the  tall  poplar  just  outside  shooting  into  a 
quivering  changeless  depth  of  blue.  Then,  as  early  as  possible, 
they  would  sally  forth  before  the  glare  became  unbearable. 
The  first  event  of  the  day  was  always  Mary's  bathe,  which 
gradually  became  a  spectacle  for  the  whole  beach,  so  ingenious 
were  the  blandishments  of  the  father  who  wooed  her  into  the 
warm  sandy  shallows,  and  so  beguiling  the  glee  and  pluck  of 
the  two-year-old  English  bebe.  By  eleven  the  heat  out  of  doors 
grew  intolerable,  and  they  would  stroll  back — father  and 
mother  and  trailing  child— past  the  hotels  on  the  piaffe,  along 
the  irregular  village  lane,  to  the  little  house  where  they  had 


OHAP.  XLVI  GAIN  AND  LOSS  557 

established  themselves,  with  Mary's  nurse  and  a  French  bonne 
to  look  after  them  ;  would  find  the  green  wooden  shutters 
drawn  close;  the  dejeuner  waiting  for  them  in  the  cool  bare 
room  ;  and  the  scent  of  the  coffee  penetrating  from  the  kitchen, 
where  the  two  maids  kept  up  a  dumb  but  perpetual  warfare. 
Then  afterwards  Mary,  emerging  from  her  sun-bonnet,  would 
be  tumbled  into  her  white  bed  upstairs,  and  lie,  a  flushed  image 
of  sleep,  till  the  patter  of  her  little  feet  on  the  boards  which 
alone  separated  one  storey  from  the  other,  warned  mother  and 
nurse  that  an  imp  of  mischief  was  let  loose  again.  Meanwhile 
Robert,  in  the  carpetless  salon,  would  lie  back  in  the  rickety 
armchair  which  was  its  only  luxury,  lazily  dozing  and  dream- 
ing, Balzac,  perhaps,  in  his  hand,  but  quite  another  comedie 
humaine  unrolling  itself  vaguely  meanwhile  in  the  contriving 
optimist  mind. 

Petites  Dalles  was  not  fashionable  yet,  though  it  aspired  to 
be ;  but  it  could  boast  of  a  deputy,  and  a  senator,  and  a  pro- 
fessor of  the  College  de  France,  as  good  as  any  at  Etretat,  a 
tired  journalist  or  two,  and  a  sprinkling  of  Rouen  men  of  busi- 
ness. Robert  soon  made  friends  among  them,  more  suo,  by  dint 
of  a  rough-and-ready  French,  spoken  with  the  most  unblushing 
accent  imaginable,  and  lounged  along  the  sands  through  many 
an  amusing  and  sociable  hour  with  one  or  other  of  his  new 
acquaintances. 

But  by  the  evening  husband  and  wife  would  leave  the  crowded 
beach,  and  mount  by  some  tortuous  dusty  way  on  to  the  high 
plateau  through  which  was  cleft  far  below  the  wooded  fissure 
of  the  village.  Here  they  seemed  to  have  climbed  the  bean- 
stalk into  a  new  world.  The  rich  Normandy  country  lay  all 
round  them — the  cornfields,  the  hedgeless  tracts  of  white- 
flowered  lucerne  or  crimson  clover,  dotted  by  the  orchard  trees 
which  make  one  vast  garden  of  the  land  as  one  sees  it  from  a 
height.  On  the  fringe  of  the  cliff,  where  the  soil  became  too 
thin  and  barren  even  for  French  cultivation,  there  was  a  wild 
belt,  half  heather,  half  tangled  grass  and  flower-growth,  which 
the  English  pair  loved  for  their  own  special  reasons.  Bathed  in 
light,  cooled  by  the  evening  wind,  the  patches  of  heather  glow- 
ing, the  tall  grasses  swaying  in  the  breeze,  there  were  moments 
when  its  wide,  careless,  dusty  beauty  reminded  them  poignantly, 
and  yet  most  sweetly,  of  the  home  of  their  first  unclouded 
happiness,  of  the  Surrey  commons  and  wildernesses. 

One  evening  they  were  sitting  in  the  warm  dusk  by  the  edge 
of  a  little  dip  of  heather  sheltered  by  a  tuft  of  broom,  when 
suddenly  they  heard  the  purring  sound  of  the  night- jar,  and 
immediately  after  the  bird  itself  lurched  past  them,  and  as  it 
disappeared  into  the  darkness  they  caught  several  times  the 
characteristic  click  of  the  wing. 

Catherine  raised  her  hand  and  laid  it  on  Robert's.  The 
sudden  tears  dropped  on  to  her  cheeka 

'  Did  you  hear  it,  Robert  ? ' 


558  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

He  drew  her  to  him.  These  involuntary  signs  of  an  abiding 
pain  in  her  always  smote  him  to  the  heart. 

'  I  am  not  unhappy,  Robert,'  she  said  at  last,  raising  her  head. 
'  No  ;  if  you  will  only  get  well  and  strong.  I  have  submitted. 
It  is  not  for  myself,  but ' 

For  what  then  ?  Merely  the  touchingness  of  mortal  things 
as  such  ? — of  youth,  of  hope,  of  memory  ? 

Choking  down  a  sob,  she  looked  seaward  over  the  curling 
flame-coloured  waves,  while  he  held  her  hand  close  and  tenderly. 
No — she  was  not  unhappy.  Something,  indeed,  had  gone  for 
ever  out  of  that  early  joy.  Her  life  had  been  caught  and  nipped 
in  the  great  inexorable  wheel  of  things.  It  would  go  in  some 
sense  maimed  to  the  end.  But  the  bitter  self-torturing  of  that 
first  endless  year  was  over.  Love,  and  her  husband,  and  the 
thousand  subtle  forces  of  a  changing  world  had  conquered. 
She  would  live  and  die  steadfast  to  the  old  faiths.  But  her 
present  mind  and  its  outlook  was  no  more  the  mind  of  her  early 
married  life  than  the  Christian  philosophy  of  to-day  is  the 
Christian  philosophy  of  the  Middle  Ages.  She  was  not  conscious 
of  change,  but  change  there  was.  She  had,  in  fact,  undergone 
that  dissociation  of  the  moral  judgment  from  a  special  series  of 
religious  formulae  which  is  the  crucial,  the  epoch-making  fact  of 
our  day.  '  Unbelief,'  says  the  orthodox  preacher,  '  is  sin,  and 
implies  it ' :  and  while  he  speaks,  the  saint  in  the  unbeliever 
gently  smiles  down  his  argument,  and  suddenly,  in  the  rebel  of 
yesterday  men  see  the  rightful  heir  of  to-morrow. 


CHAPTER    XLVH 

MEANWHILE  the  Leyburns  were  at  Burwood  again.  Rose's 
summer,  indeed,  was  much  varied  by  visits  to  country  houses — 
many  of  them  belonging  to  friends  and  acquaintances  of  the 
Flaxman  family — by  concerts,  and  the  demands  of  several  new 
and  exciting  artistic  friendships.  But  she  was  seldom  loth  to 
come  back  to  the  little  bare  valley  and  the  gray- walled  house. 
Even  the  rain  which  poured  down  in  August,  quite  unabashed 
by  any  consciousness  of  fine  weather  elsewhere,  was  not  as 
intolerable  to  her  as  in  past  days. 

The  girl  was  not  herself ;  there  was  visible  in  her  not  only 
that  general  softening  and  deepening  of  character  which  had 
been  the  consequence  of  her  trouble  in  the  spring,  but  a  painful 
ennui  she  could  hardly  disguise,  a  longing  for  she  knew  not 
what.  She  was  beginning  to  take  the  homage  paid  to  her  gift 
and  her  beauty  with  a  quiet  dignity,  which  was  in  no  sense  false 
modesty,  but  implied  a  certain  clearness  of  vision,  curious  and 
disquieting  in  so  young  and  dazzling  a  creature.  And  when  she 
came  home  from  her  travels  she  would  develop  a  taste  for  long 


CHAP,  xrvii  GAIN  AND  LOSS  559 

walks,  breasting  the  mountains  in  rain  or  sun,  penetrating  to 
their  austerest  solitudes  alone,  as  though  haunted  by  that  pro- 
found saying  of  Obermann,  'Man  is  not  made  for  enjoyment 
only — la  tristesse  fait  aussi  partie  de  ses  vastes  besoins.' 

What,  indeed,  was  it  that  ailed  her  ?  In  her  lonely  moments, 
especially  in  those  moments  among  the  high  fells,  beside  some 
little  tarn  or  streamlet,  while  the  sheets  of  mist  swept  by  her, 
or  the  great  clouds  dappled  the  spreading  sides  of  the  hills,  she 
thought  often  of  Langham — of  that  first  thrill  of  passion  which 
had  passed  through  her,  delusive  and  abortive,  like  one  of  those 
first  thrills  of  spring  which  bring  out  the  buds,  only  to  provide 
victims  for  the  frost.  Now  with  her  again  '  a  moral  east  wind 
was  blowing.'  The  passion  was  gone.  The  thought  of  Lang- 
ham  still  roused  in  her  a  pity  that  seemed  to  strain  at  her  heart- 
strings. But  was  it  really  she,  really  this  very  Rose,  who  had 
rested  for  that  one  intoxicating  instant  on  his  breast  ?  She  felt 
a  sort  of  bitter  shame  over  her  own  shallowness  of  feeling.  She 
must  surely  be  a  poor  creature,  else  how  could  such  a  thing 
have  befallen  her  and  have  left  so  little  trace  behind  1 

And  then,  her  hand  dabbling  in  the  water,  her  face  raised  to 
the  blind  friendly  mountains,  she  would  go  dreaming  far  afield. 
Little  vignettes  of  London  would  come  and  go  on  the  inner 
retina ;  smiles  and  sighs  would  follow  one  another. 

'  How  kind  he  was  that  time  I  how  amusing  this  ! ' 

Or,  ''How  provoking  he  was  that  afternoon/  how  cold  that 
evening  ! ' 

Nothing  else — the  pronoun  remained  ambiguous. 

'  I  want  a  friend  ! '  she  said  to  herself  once  as  she  was  sitting 
far  up  in  the  bosom  of  High  Fell,  '  I  want  a  friend  badly.  Yet 
my  lover  deserts  me,  and  I  send  away  my  friend  ! ' 

One  afternoon  Mrs.  Thornburgh,  the  vicar,  and  Rose  were 
wandering  round  the  churchyard  together,  enjoying  a  break  of 
sunny  weather  after  days  of  rain.  Mrs.  Thornburgh's  personal 
accent,  so  to  speak,  had  grown  perhaps  a  little  more  defined,  a 
little  more  emphatic  even,  than  when  we  first  knew  her.  The 
vicar,  on  the  other  hand,  was  a  trifle  grayer,  a  trifle  more  sub- 
missive, as  though  on  the  whole,  in  the  long  conjugal  contest  of 
life,  he  was  getting  clearly  worsted  as  the  years  went  on.  But 
the  performance  through  which  his  wife  was  now  taking  him 
tried  him  exceptionally,  and  she  only  kept  him  to  it  with 
difficulty.  She  nad  had  an  attack  of  bronchitis  in  the  spring, 
and  was  still  somewhat  delicate — a  fact  which  to  his  mind  gave 
her  an  unfair  advantage  of  him.  For  she  would  make  use  of  it 
to  keep  constantly  before  him  ideas  which  he  disliked,  and  in 
which  he  considered  she  took  a  morbid  and  unbecoming 
pleasure.  The  vicar  was  of  opinion  that  when  his  latter  end 
overtook  him  he  should  meet  it  on  the  whole  as  courageously 
as  other  men.  But  he  was  altogether  averse  to  dwelling  upon 
it,  or  the  adjuncts  of  it,  beforehand.  Mrs.  Thornburgh,  how- 
ever, since  her  illness  had  awoke  to  that  inquisitive  affectionate 


560  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

interest  in  these  very  adjuncts  which  many  women  feel.  And 
it  was  extremely  disagreeable  to  the  vicar. 

At  the  present  moment  she  was  engaged  in  choosing  the 
precise  spots  in  the  little  churchyard  where  it  seemed  to  her  it 
would  be  pleasant  to  rest.  There  was  one  corner  in  particular 
which  attracted  her,  and  she  stood  now  looking  at  it  with 
measuring  eyes  and  dissatisfied  mouth. 

'  William,  I  wish  you  would  come  here  and  help  me  ! ' 

The  vicar  took  no  notice,  but  went  on  talking  to  Rose. 

'  William  ! '  imperatively. 

The  vicar  turned  unwillingly. 

'  You  know,  William,  if  you  wouldn't  mind  lying  with  your 
feet  that  way,  there  would  be  just  room  for  me.  But,  of  course, 

if  you  will  have  them  the  other  way '  The  shoulders  in  the 

old  black  silk  mantle  went  up,  and  the  gray  curls  shook  dubi- 
ously. 

The  vicar's  countenance  showed  plainly  that  he  thought  the 
remark  worse  than  irrelevant. 

'  My  dear,'  he  said  crossly,  '  I  am  not  thinking  of  those  things, 
nor  do  I  wish  to  think  of  them.  Everything  has  its  time  and 
place.  It  is  close  on  tea,  and  Miss  Rose  says  she  must  be  going 
home.' 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  again  shook  her  head,  this  time  with  a 
disapproving  sigh. 

'  You  talk,  William,'  she  said  severely,  cas  if  you  were  a  young 
man,  instead  of  being  turned  sixty-six  last  birthday.' 

And  again  she  measured  the  spaces  with  her  eye,  checking 
the  results  aloud.  But  the  vicar  was  obdurately  deaf.  He 
strolled  on  with  Rose,  who  was  chattering  to  him  about  a  visit 
to  Manchester,  and  the  little  church  gate  clicked  behind  them. 
Hearing  it,  Mrs.  Thornburgh  relaxed  her  measurements.  They 
were  only  really  interesting  to  her  after  all  when  the  vicar  was 
by.  She  hurried  after  them  as  fast  as  her  short  squat  figure 
would  allow,  and  stopped  midway  to  make  an  exclamation. 

'  A  carriage  ! '  she  said,  shading  her  eyes  with  a  very  plump 
hand,  '  stopping  at  Greybarns  ! ' 

The  one  road  of  the  valley  was  visible  from  the  churchyai'd, 
winding  along  the  bottom  of  the  shallow  green  trough,  for  at 
least  two  miles.  Greybarns  was  a  farmhouse  just  beyond 
Burwood,  about  half  a  mile  away. 

Mrs.  Thornburgh  moved  on,  her  matronly  face  aglow  with 
interest. 

'  Mary  Jenkinson  taken  ill ! '  she  said.  '  Of  course,  that's 
Doctor  Baker !  Well,  it's  to  be  hoped  it  won't  be  twins  t his 
time.  But,  as  I  told  her  last  Sunday,  "  It's  constitutional,  my 
dear."  I  knew  a  woman  who  had  three  pairs !  Five  o'clock 
now.  Well,  about  seven  it'll  be  worth  while  sending  to  inquire.' 

When  she  overtook  the  vicar  and  his  companion,  she  began 
to  whisper  certain  particulars  into  the  ear  that  was  not  on 
Rose's  side.  The  vicar,  who,  like  Uncle  Toby,  was  possessed  of 


CHAP.  XLVII  GAIN  AND  LOSS  561 

a  fine  natural  modesty,  would  have  preferred  that  his  wife 
should  refrain  from  whispering  on  these  topics  in  Rose's  pre- 
sence. But  he  submitted  lest  opposition  should  provoke  her 
into  still  more  audible  improprieties ;  and  Rose  walked  on  a 
step  or  two  in  front  of  the  pair,  her  eyes  twinkling  a  little.  At 
the  vicarage  gate  she  was  let  off  without  the  customary  final 
gossip.  Mrs.  Thornburgh  was  so  much  occupied  in  the  fate 
hanging  over  Mary  Jenkinson  that  she,  for  once,  forgot  to 
catechise  Rose  as  to  any  marriageable  young  men  she  might 
have  come  across  in  a  recent  visit  to  a  great  country-house  of 
the  neighbourhood :  an  operation  which  formed  the  invariable 
pendant  to  any  of  Rose's  absences. 

So,  with  a  smiling  nod  to  them  both,  the  girl  turned  home- 
wards. As  she  did  so  she  became  aware  of  a  man's  figure 
walking  along  the  space  of  road  between  Greybarns  and 
Burwood,  the  western  light  behind  it. 

Dr.  Baker?  But  even  granting  that  Mrs.  Jenkinson  had 
brought  him  five  miles  on  a  false  alarm,  in  the  provoking 
manner  of  matrons,  the  shortest  professional  visit  could  not  be 
over  in  this  time. 

She  looked  again,  shading  her  eyes.  She  was  nearing  the 
gate  of.  Burwood,  and  involuntarily  slackened  step.  The  man 
who  was  approaching,  catching  sight  of  the  slim  girlish  figure 
in  the  broad  hat  and  pink  and  white  cotton  dress,  hurried  up. 
The  colour  rushed  to  Rose's  cheek.  In  another  minute  she  and 
Hugh  Flaxman  were  face  to  face. 

She  could  not  hide  her  astonishment. 

'  Why  are  you  not  in  Scotland  1 '  she  said  after  she  had  given 
him  her  hand.  '  Lady  Helen  told  me  last  week  she  expected 
you  in  Ross-shire.' 

Directly  the  words  left  her  mouth  she  felt  she  had  given  him 
an  opening.  And  why  had  Nature  plagued  her  with  this  trick 
of  blushing  ? 

'  Because  I  am  here  ! '  he  said  smiling,  his  keen  dancing  eyes 
looking  down  upon  her.  He  was  bronzed  as  she  had  never  seen 
him.  And  never  had  he  seemed  to  bring  with  him  such  an 
atmosphere  of  cool  pleasant  strength.  '  I  have  slain  so  much 
since  the  first  of  July  that  I  can  slay  no  more.  I  am  not  like 
other  men.  The  Nimrod  in  me  is  easily  gorged,  and  goes  to 
sleep  after  a  while.  So  this  is  Burwood  1 

He  had  caught  her  just  on  the  little  sweep  leading  to  the 
gate,  and  now  his  eye  swept  quickly  over  the  modest  old  house, 
with  its  trim  garden,  its  overgrown  porch  and  open  casement 
windows.  She  dared  not  ask  him  again  why  he  was  there. 
In  the  properest  manner  she  invited  him  '  to  come  in  and  see 
mamma.' 

'  I  hope  Mrs.  Ley  burn  is  better  than  she  was  in  town  1  I 
shall  be  delighted  to  see  her.  But  must  you  go  in  so  soon  ?  I 
left  my  carriage  half  a  mile  below,  and  have  been  revelling  in 
the  sun  and  air.  I  am  loth  to  go  indoors  yet  awhile.  Are  you 

2o 


562  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

busy  ?  Would  it  trouble  you  to  put  me  in  the  way  to  the  head 
of  the  valley  ?  Then,  if  you  will  allow  me,  I  will  present  myself 
later.' 

Rose  thought  his  request  as  little  in  the  ordinary  line  of 
things  as  his  appearance.  But  she  turned  and  walked  beside 
him,  pointing  out  the  crags  at  the  head,  the  great  sweep  of  High 
Fell,  and  the  pass  over  to  Ullswater,  with  as  much  sangfroid 
as  she  was  mistress  of. 

He,  on  his  side,  informed  her  that  on  his  way  to  Scotland  he 
had  bethought  himself  that  he  had  never  seen  the  Lakes,  that 
he  had  stopped  at  Whinborough,  was  bent  on  walking  over  the 
High  Fell  pass  to  Ullswater,  and  making  his  way  thence  to 
Ambleside,  Grasmere,  and  Keswick. 

'  But  you  are  much  too  late  to-day  to  get  to  Ullswater  ? '  cried 
Rose  incautiously. 

'  Certainly.  You  see  my  hotel,'  and  he  pointed,  smiling,  to  a 
white  farmhouse  standing  just  at  the  bend  of  the  valley,  where 
the  road  turned  towards  Whinborough.  '  I  persuaded  the  good 
woman  there  to  give  me  a  bed  for  the  night,  took  my  carriage 
a  little  farther,  then,  knowing  I  had  friends  in  these  parts,  I 
came  on  to  explore.' 

Rose  angrily  felt  her  flush  getting  deeper  and  deeper.   . 

'You  are  the  first  tourist,'  she  said  coolly,  'who  has  ever 
stayed  in  Whindale.' 

'  Tourist !  I  repudiate  the  name.  I  am  a  worshipper  at  the 
shrine  of  Wordsworth  and  Nature.  Helen  and  I  long  ago 
denned  a  tourist  as  a  being  with  straps.  I  defy  you  to  discover 
a  strap  about  me,  and  I  left  my  Murray  in  the  railway  carriage.' 

He  looked  at  her  laughing.  She  laughed  too.  The  infection 
of  his  strong  sunny  presence  was  irresistible.  In  London  it  had 
been  so  easy  to  stand  on  her  dignity,  to  remember  whenever  he 
was  friendly  that  the  night  before  he  had  been  distant.  In 
these  green  solitudes  it  was  not  'easy  to  be  anything  but  natural 
— the  child  of  the  moment ! 

'You  are  neither  more  practical  nor  more  economical  than 
when  I  saw  you  last,'  she  said  demurely.  '  When  did  you  leave 
Norway  1 ' 

They  wandered  on  past  the  vicarage  talking  fast.  Mr.  Flax- 
man,  who  had  been  joined  for  a  time,  on  his  fishing  tour,  by 
Lord  Waynflete,  was  giving  her  an  amusing  account  of  the  sus- 
ceptibility to  titles  shown  by  the  primitive  democrats  of  Norway. 
As  they  passed  a  gap  in  the  vicarage  hedge,  laughing  and  chat- 
ting, Rose  became  aware  of  a  window  and  a  gray  head  hastily 
withdrawn.  Mr.  Flaxman  was  puzzled  by  the  merry  flash,  in- 
stantly suppressed,  that  shot  across  her  face. 

Presently  they  reached  the  hamlet  of  High  Close,  and  the 
house  where  Mary  Backhouse  died,  and  where  her  father  and 
the  poor  bedridden  Jim  still  lived.  They  mounted  the  path 
behind  it,  and  plunged  into  the  hazel  plantation  which  had 
sheltered  Robert  and  Catherine  on  a  memorable  night.  But 


CHAP.  XLVII  GAIN  AND  LOSS  563 

when  they  were  through  it,  Rose  turned  to  the  right  along  a 
scrambling  path  leading  to  the  top  of  the  first  great  shoulder  of 
High  Fell.  It  was  a  steep  climb,  though  a  short  one,  and  it 
seemed  to  Rose  that  when  she  had  once  let  him  help  her  over  a 
rock  her  hand  was  never  her  own  again.  He  kept  it  an  almost 
constant  prisoner  on  one  pretext  or  another  till  they  were  at 
the  top. 

Then  she  sank  down  on  a  rock  out  of  breath.  He  stood  beside 
her,  lifting  his  brown  wideawake  from  his  brow.  The  air  below 
had  been  warm  and  relaxing.  Here  it  played  upon  them  both 
with  a  delicious  life-giving  freshness.  He  looked  round  on  the 
great  hollow  bosom  of  the  fell,  the  crags  buttressing  it  on  either 
hand,  the  winding  greenness  of  the  valley,  the  white  sparkle  of 
the  river. 

'  It  reminds  me  a  little  of  Norway.  The  same  austere  and 
frugal  beauty — the  same  bare  valley  floors.  But  no  pines,  no 
peaks,  no  fiords  ! ' 

'  No  ! '  said  Rose  scornfully,  '  we  are  not  Norway,  and  we  are 
not  Switzerland.  To  prevent  disappointment,  I  may  at  once 
inform  you  that  we  have  no  glaciers,  and  that  there  is  perhaps 
only  one  place  in  the  district  where  a  man  who  was  not  an  idiot 
could  succeed  in  killing  himself.' 

He  looked  at  her,  calmly  smiling. 

1  You  are  angry,'  he  said,  '  because  I  make  comparisons.  You 
are  wholly  on  a  wrong  scent.  I  never  saw  a  scene  in  the  world 
that  pleased  me  half  as  much  as  this  bare  valley,  that  gray  roof ' 
— and  he  pointed  to  Burwood  among  its  trees — 'and  this  knoll 
of  rocky  ground.' 

His  look  travelled  back  to  her,  and  her  eyes  sank  beneath  it. 
He  threw  himself  down  on  the  short  grass  beside  her. 

'It  rained  this  morning,'  she  still  had  the  spirit  to  murmur 
under  her  breath. 

He  took  not  the  smallest  heed. 

'Do  you  know,'  he  said — and  his  voice  dropped — 'can  you 
guess  at  all  why  I  am  here  to-day  ? ' 

'  You  had  never  seen  the  Lakes,'  she  repeated  in  a  prim  voice, 
her  eyes  still  cast  down,  the  corners  of  her  mouth  twitching. 
'  You  stopped  at  Whinborough,  intending  to  take  the  pass  over 
to  Ullswater,  thence  to  make  your  way  to  Ambleside  and  Kes- 
wick — or  was  it  to  Keswick  and  Ambleside  ? ' 

She  looked  up  innocently.  But  the  flashing  glance  she  met 
abashed  her  again. 

'  Taquine  ! '  he  said,  '  but  you  shall  not  laugh  me  out  of  coun- 
tenance. If  I  said  all  that  to  you  just  now,  may  I  be  forgiven. 
One  purpose,  one  only,  brought  me  from  Norway,  forbade  me  to 
go  to  Scotland,  drew  me  to  Whinborough,  guided  me  up  your 
valley — the  purpose  of  seeing  your  face  ! ' 

It  could  not  be  said  at  that  precise  moment  that  he  had  at- 
tained it.  Rather  she  seemed  bent  on  hiding  that  face  quite 
away  from  him.  It  seemed  to  him  an  age  before,  drawn  by  the 


564  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

magnetism  of  his  look,  her  hands  dropped,  and  she  faced  him, 
crimson,  her  breath  fluttering  a  little.  Then  she  would  have 
spoken,  but  he  would  not  let  her.  Very  tenderly  and  quietly 
his  hand  possessed  itself  of  hers  as  he  knelt  beside  her. 

'  I  have  been  in  exile  for  two  months — you  sent  me.  I  saw 
that  I  troubled  you  in  London.  You  thought  I  was  pursu- 
ing you — pressing  you.  Your  manner  said  "Go  !"  and  I  went. 
But  do  you  think  that  for  one  day,  or  hour,  or  moment  I  have 
thought  of  anything  else  in  those  Noi'way  woods  but  of  you  and 
of  this  blessed  moment  when  I  should  be  at  your  feet,  as  I  am 
now?' 

She  trembled.  Her  hand  seemed  to  leap  in  his.  His  gaze 
melted,  enwrapped  her.  He  bent  forward.  In  another  moment 
her  silence  would  have  so  answered  for  her  that  his  covetous 
arms  would  have  stolen  about  her  for  good  and  all.  But  sud- 
denly a  kind  of  shiver  ran  through  her — a  shiver  which  was  half 
memory,  half  shame.  She  drew  back  violently,  covering  her 
eyes  with  her  hand. 

'  Oh  no,  no  ! '  she  cried,  and  her  other  hand  struggled  to  get 
free,  '  don't,  don't  talk  to  me  so — I  have  a — a — confession.' 

He  watched  her,  his  lips  trembling  a  little,  a  smile  of  the 
most  exquisite  indulgence  and  understanding  dawning  in  his 
eyes.  Was  she  going  to  confess  to  him  what  he  knew  so  well 
already  ?  If  he  could  only  force  her  to  say  it  on  his  breast. 

But  she  held  him  at  arm's  length. 

'  You  remember — you  remember  Mr.  Langham  1 ' 

'  Remember  him  ! '  echoed  Mr.  Flaxman  fervently. 

'  That  thought-reading  night  at  Lady  Charlotte's,  on  the  way 
home,  he  spoke  to  me.  I  said  I  loved  him.  I  did  love  him  ;  I 
let  him  kiss  me  ! ' 

Her  flush  had  quite  faded.  He  could  hardly  tell  whether  she 
was  yielding  or  defiant  as  the  words  burst  from  her. 

An  expression,  half  trouble,  half  compunction,  came  into  his 
face. 

'  I  knew,'  he  said  very  low ;  '  or  rather,  I  guessed.'  And  for 
an  instant  it  occurred  to  him  to  unburden  himself,  to  ask  her 
pardon  for  that  espionage  of  his.  But  no,  no  ;  not  till  he  had 
her  safe.  '  I  guessed,  I  mean,  that  there  had  been  something 
grave  between  you.  I  saw  you  were  sad.  I  would  have  given 
the  world  to  comfort  you.' 

Her  lip  quivered  childishly. 

'  I  said  I  loved  him  that  night.  The  next  morning  he  wrote 
to  me  that  it  could  never  be.' 

He  looked  at  her  a  moment  embarrassed.  The  conversation 
was  not  easy.  Then  the  smile  broke  once  more. 

'  And  you  have  forgotten  him  as  he  deserved.  If  I  were  not 
sure  of  that  I  could  wish  him  all  the  tortures  of  the  Inferno  ! 
As  it  is,  I  cannot  think  of  him ;  I  cannot  let  you  think  of  him. 
Sweet,  do  you  know  that  ever  since  I  first  saw  you  the  one 
thought  of  my  days,  the  dream  of  my  nights,  the  purpose  of  my 


CHAP.  XLVII  GAIN  AND  LOSS  565 

whole  life,  has  been  to  win  you  1  There  was  another  in  the 
field;  I  knew  it.  I  stood  by  and  waited.  He  failed  you — I 
knew  he  must  in  some  form  or  other.  Then  I  was  hasty,  and 
you  resented  it.  Little  tyrant,  you  made  yourself  a  Rose  with 
many  thorns  !  But,  tell  me,  tell  me,  it  is  all  over — your  pain, 
my  waiting.  Make  yourself  sweet  to  me  !  unfold  to  me  at  last  ? ' 

An  instant  she  wavered.  His  bliss  was  almost  in  his  grasp. 
Then  she  sprang  up,  and  Flaxman  found  himself  standing  by 
her,  rebuffed  and  surprised. 

'  No,  no  ! '  she  cried,  holding  out  her  hands  to  him  though  all 
the  time.  '  Oh,  it  is  too  soon !  I  should  despise  myself,  I  do 
despise  myself.  It  tortures  me  that  I  can  change  and  forget  so 
easily ;  it  ought  to  torture  you.  Oh,  don't  ask  me  yet  to — to 

'  To  be  my  wife,'  he  said  cahnly,  his  cheek  a  little  flushed,  his 
eye  meeting  hers  with  a  passion  in  it  that  strove  so  hard  for  self- 
control  it  was  almost  sternness. 

'  Not  yet ! '  she  pleaded,  and  then,  after  a  moment's  hesitation, 
she  broke  into  the  most  appealing  smiles,  though  the  tears  were 
in  her  eyes,  hurrying  out  the  broken,  beseeching  words.  '  I  want 
a  friend  so  much — a  real  friend.  Since  Catherine  left  I  have  had 
no  one.  I  have  been  running  riot.  Take  me  in  hand.  Write 
to  me,  scold  me,  advise  me,  I  will  be  your  pupil,  I  will  tell  you 
everything.  You  seem  to  me  so  fearfully  wise,  so  much  older. 
Oh,  don't  be  vexed.  And — and — in  six  months ' 

She  turned  away,  rosy  as  her  name.  He  held  her  still,  so 
rigidly,  that  her  hands  were  almost  hurt.  The  shadow  of  the 
hat  fell  over  her  eyes ;  the  delicate  outlines  of  the  neck  and 
shoulders  in  the  pretty  pale  dress  were  defined  against  the  green 
hill  background.  He  studied  her  deliberately,  a  hundred  different 
expressions  sweeping  across  his  face.  A  debate  of  the  most 
feverish  interest  was  going  on  within  him.  Her  seriousness  at 
the  moment,  the  chances  of  the  future,  her  character,  his  own — 
all  these  knotty  points  entered  into  it,  had  to  be  weighed  and 
decided  with  lightning  rapidity.  But  Hugh  Flaxman  was  born 
under  a  lucky  star,  and  the  natal  charm  held  good. 

At  last  he  gave  a  long  breath ;  he  stooped  and  kissed  her 
hands. 

'So  be  it.  For  six  months  I  will  be  your  guardian,  your 
friend,  your  teasing  implacable  censor.  At  the  end  of  that  time 
I  will  be — well,  never  mind  what.  I  give  you  fair  warning.' 

He  released  her.  Rose  clasped  her  hands  before  her  and  stood 
drooping.  Now  that  she  had  gained  her  point,  all  her  bright 
mocking  independence  seemed  to  have  vanished.  She  might 
have  been  in  reality  the  tremulous  timid  child  she  seemed.  His 
spirits  rose  ;  he  began  to  like  the  role  she  had  assigned  to  him. 
The  touch  of  unexpectedness,  in  all  she  said  and  did,  acted  with 
exhilarating  force  on  his  fastidious  romantic  sense. 

'  Now,  then,'  he  said,  picking  up  her  gloves  from  the  grass, 
'you  have  given  me  my  rights ;  I  will  begin  to  exercise  them 
at  once.  I  must  take  you  home,  the  clouds  are  coming  up 


566  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

again,  and  on  the  way  will  you  kindly  give  me  a  full,  true,  and 
minute  account  of  these  two  months  during  which  you  have 
been  so  dangerously  left  to  your  own  devices  1 ' 

She  hesitated,  and  began  to  speak  witli  difficulty,  her  eyes 
on  the  ground.  But  by  the  time  they  were  in  the  main  Shan- 
moor  path  again,  and  she  was  not  so  weakly  dependent  on  his 
physical  aid,  her  spirits  too  returned.  Pacing  along  with  her 
hands  behind  her,  she  began  by  degrees  to  throw  into  her 
accounts  of  her  various  visits  and  performances  plenty  of  her 
natural  malice. 

And  after  a  bit,  as  that  strange  storm  of  feeling  which  had 
assailed  her  on  the  mountain-top  abated  something  of  its  be- 
wildering force,  certain  old  grievances  began  to  raise  very 
lively  heads  in  her.  The  smart  of  Lady  Fauntleroy's  ball  was 
still  there ;  she  had  not  yet  forgiven  him  all  those  relations ; 
and  the  teasing  image  of  Lady  Florence  woke  up  in  her. 

'  It  seems  to  me,'  he  said  at  last  dryly,  as  he  opened  a  gate 
for  her  not  far  from  Burwood,  'that  you  have  been  making 
yourself  agreeable  to  a  vast  number  of  people.  In  my  new 
capacity  of  censor  I  should  like  to  warn  you  that  there  is  no- 
thing so  bad  for  the  character  as  universal  popularity.' 

'  /  have  not  got  a  thousand  and  one  important  cousins  ! '  she 
exclaimed,  her  lip  curling.  'If  I  want  to  please,  I  must  take 
pains,  else  "  nobody  minds  me." ' 

He  looked  at  her  attentively,  his  handsome  face  aglow  with 
animation. 

'  What  can  you  mean  by  that  ? '  he  said  slowly. 

But  she  was  quite  silent,  her  head  well  in  air. 

'  Cousins  1 '  he  repeated.  '  Cousins  ?  And  clearly  meant  as  a 
taunt  at  me  !  Now  when  did  you  see  my  cousins  ?  I  grant 
that  I  possess  a  monstrous  and  indefensible  number.  I  have 
it.  You  think  that  at  Lady  Fauntleroy's  ball  I  devoted  my- 
self too  much  to  my  family,  and  too  little  to ' 

'  Not  at  all ! '  cried  Hose  hastily,  adding,  with  charming 
incoherence,  while  she  twisted  a  sprig  of  honeysuckle  in  her 
restless  fingers,  '  Some  cousins  of  course  are  pretty.' 

He  paused  an  instant :  then  a  light  broke  over  his  face,  and 
his  burst  of  quiet  laughter  was  infinitely  pleasant  to  hear. 
Rose  got  redder  and  redder.  She  realised  dimly  that  she  was 
hardly  maintaining  the  spirit  of  their  contract,  and  that  he 
was  studying  her  with  eyes  inconveniently  bright  and  pene- 
trating. 

'  Shall  I  quote  to  you,'  he  said,  '  a  sentence  of  Sterne's  1  If 
it  violate  our  contract  I  must  plead  extenuating  circumstances. 
Sterne  is  admonishing  a  young  friend  as  to  his  manners  in 
society  :  "  You  are  in  love,"  he  says.  "  Tant  mieux.  But  do  not 
imagine  that  the  fact  bestows  on  you  a  licence  to  behave  like  a 
bear  towards  all  the  rest  of  the  world.  Affection  may  surely 
conduct  tkee  through  an  avenue  of  women  to  her  who  possesses  thy 
heart  without  tearing  the  flounces  of  any  of  their  petticoats  "- 


CHAP.  XLVIII  GAIN  AND  LOSS  567 

not  even  those  of  little  cousins  of  seventeen !  I  say  this,  you 
will  observe,  in  the  capacity  you  have  assigned  me.  In  another 
capacity  I  venture  to  think  1  could  justify  myself  still  better.' 

'  My  guardian  and  director,'  cried  Rose,  '  must  not  begin  his 
functions  by  misleading  and  sophistical  quotations  from  the 
classics ! ' 

He  did  not  answer  for  a  moment.  They  were  at  the  gate  of 
Burwood,  under  a  thick  screen  of  wild  cherry  trees.  The  gate 
was  half  open,  and  his  hand  was  on  it. 

'  And  my  pupil,'  he  said,  bending  to  her,  '  must  not  begin  by 
challenging  the  prisoner  whose  hands  she  has  bound,  or  he  will 
not  answer  for  the  consequences  ! ' 

His  words  were  threatening,  but  his  voice,  his  fine  expressive 
face,  were  infinitely  sweet.  By  a  kind  of  fascination  she  never 
afterwards  understood,  Hose  for  answer  startled  him  and  her- 
self. She  bent  her  head  :  she  laid  her  lips  on  the  hand  which 
held  the  gate,  and  then  she  was  through  it  in  an  instant.  He 
followed  her  in  vain.  He  never  overtook  her  till  at  the  drawing- 
room  door  she  paused  with  amazing  dignity. 

'Mamma,'  she  said,  throwing  it  open,  'here  is  Mr.  Flaxman. 
He  is  come  from  Norway,  and  is  on  his  way  to  Ullswater.  I 
will  go  and  speak  to  Margaret  about  tea.' 


CHAPTER  XLVIII 

AFTER  the  little  incident  recorded  at  the  end  of  the  preceding 
chapter,  Hugh  Flaxman  may  be  forgiven  if,  as  he  walked  home 
along  the  valley  that  night  towards  the  farmhouse  where  he 
had  established  himself,  he  entertained  a  very  comfortable 
scepticism  as  to  the  permanence  of  that  curious  contract  into 
which  Rose  had  just  forced  him.  However,  he  was  quite  mis- 
taken. Rose's  maiden  dignity  avenged  itself  abundantly  on 
Hugh  Flaxman  for  the  injuries  it  had  received  at  the  hands  of 
Langham.  The  restraints,  the  anomalies,  the  hairsplittings  of 
the  situation  delighted  her  ingenuous  youth.  '  I  am  free — lie  is 
free.  We  will  be  friends  for  six  months.  Possibly  we  may  not 
suit  one  another  at  all.  If  we  do — then ' 

In  the  thrill  of  that  then  lay,  of  course,  the  whole  attraction 
of  the  position. 

So  that  next  morning  Hugh  Flaxman  saw  the  comedy  was 
to  be  scrupulously  kept  up.  It  required  a  tolerably  strong 
masculine  certainty  at  the  bottom  of  him  to  enable  him  to 
resign  himself  once  more  to  his  part.  But  he  achieved  it,  and 
being  himself  a  modern  of  the  moderns,  a  lover  of  half-shades 
and  refinements  of  all  sorts,  he  began  very  soon  to  enjoy  it, 
and  to  play  it  with  an  increasing  cleverness  and  perfection. 

How  Rose  got  through  Agnes's  cross -questioning  on  the 
matter  history  sayeth  not.  Or  one  thing,  however,  a  conscien- 


568  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

tious  historian  may  be  sure,  namely,  that  Agnes  succeeded  in 
knowing  as  much  as  she  wanted  to  know.  Mrs.  Leyburn  was 
a  little  puzzled  by  the  erratic  lines  of  Mr.  Flaxman's  journeys. 
It  was,  as  she  said,  curious  that  a  man  should  start  on  a  tour 
through  the  Lakes  from  Long  Whindale. 

But  she  took  everything  naively  as  it  came,  and  as  she  was 
told.  Nothing  with  her  ever  passed  through  any  changing 
crucible  of  thought.  It  required  no  planning  to  elude  her. 
Her  mind  was  like  a  stretch  of  wet  sand,  on  which  all  impres- 
sions are  equally  easy  to  make  and  equally  fugitive.  He  liked 
them  all,  she  supposed,  in  spite  of  the  comparative  scantiness 
of  his  later  visits  to  Lerwick  Gardens,  or  he  would  not  have 
come  put  of  his  way  to  see  them.  But  as  nobody  suggested 
anything  else  to  her,  her  mind  worked  no  further,  and  she  was 
as  easily  beguiled  after  his  appearance  as  before  it  by  the 
intricacies  of  some  new  knitting. 

Things  of  course  might  have  been  different  if  Mrs.  Thorii- 
burgh  had  interfered  again  ;  but,  as  we  know,  poor  Catherine's 
sorrows  had  raised  a  whole  odd  host  of  misgivings  in  the  mind 
of  the  vicar's  wife.  She  prowled  nervously  round  Mrs.  Ley- 
burn,  filled  with  contempt  for  her  placidity ;  but  she  did  not 
attack  her.  She  spent  herself,  indeed,  on  Rose  and  Agnes,  but 
long  practice  had  made  them  adepts  in  the  art  of  baffling  her ; 
and  when  Mr.  Flaxman  went  to  tea  at  the  vicarage  in  their 
company,  in  spite  of  an  absorbing  desire  to  get  at  the  truth, 
which  caused  her  to  forget  a  new  cap,  and  let  fall  a  plate  of 
tea-cakes,  she  was  obliged  to  confess  crossly  to  the  vicar  after- 
wards that  '  no  one  could  tell  what  a  man  like  that  was  after. 
She  supposed  his  manners  were  very  aristocratic,  but  for  her 
part  she  liked  plain  people.' 

On  the  last  morning  of  Mr.  Flaxman's  stay  in  the  valley  he 
entered  the  Burwood  drive  about  eleven  o'clock,  and  Rose 
came  down  the  steps  to  meet  him.  For  a  moment  he  nattered 
himself  that  her  disturbed  looks  were  due  to  the  nearness  of 
their  farewells. 

'  There  is  something  wrong,'  he  said,  softly  detaining  her  hand 
a  moment — so  much,  at  least,  was  in  his  right. 

'  Robert  is  ill.  There  has  been  an  accident  at  Petites  Dalles. 
He  has  been  in  bed  for  a  week.  They  hope  to  get  home  in  a 
few  days.  Catherine  writes  bravely,  but  she  is  evidently  very 
low.' 

Hugh  Flaxman's  face  fell.  Certain  letters  he  had  received 
from  Elsrnere  in  July  had  lain  heavy  on  his  mind  ever  since,  so 
pitiful  was  the  half -conscious  revelation  in  them  of  an  inces- 
sant physical  struggle.  An  accident !  Elsmere  was  in  no  state 
for  accidents.  What  miserable  ill-luck  ! 

Rose  read  him  Catherine's  account.  It  appeared  that  on  a 
certain  stormy  day  a  swimmer  had  been  observed  in  difficulties 
among  the  rocks  skirting  the  northern  side  of  the  Petites  Dalles 
bay.  The  old  baigneur  of  the  place,  owner  of  the  still  primitive 


CHAP.  XLVIII  GAIN  AND  LOSS  569 

Jtablissement  des  bains,  without  stopping  to  strip,  or  even  to 
take  oft'  his  heavy  boots,  went  out  to  the  man  in  danger  with  a 
plank.  The  man  took  the  plank  and  was  safe.  Then  to  the 
people  watching,  it  became  evident  that  the  baigneur  himself 
was  in  peril.  He  became  unaccountably  feeble  in  the  water, 
and  the  cry  rose  that  he  was  sinking.  Robert,  who  happened 
to  be  bathing  near,  ran  off  to  the  spot,  jumped  in,  and  swam 
out.  By  this  time  the  old  man  had  drifted  some  way.  Robert 
succeeded,  however,  in  bringing  him  in,  and  then,  amid  an 
excited  crowd,  heaaed  by  the  baigneur's  wailing  family,  they 
carried  the  unconscious  form  on  to  the  higher  beach.  Elsmere 
was  certain  life  was  not  extinct,  and  sent  off  for  a  doctor. 
Meanwhile  no  one  seemed  to  have  any  common  sense,  or  any 
knowledge  of  how  to  proceed,  but  himself.  For  two  hours  he 
stayed  on  the  beach  in  his  dripping  bathing -clothes,  a  cold 
wind  blowing,  trying  every  device  known  to  him  :  rubbing,  hot 
bottles,  artificial  respiration.  In  vain.  The  man  was  too  old 
and  too  bloodless.  Directly  after  the  doctor  arrived  he  breathed 
his  last,  amid  the  wild  and  passionate  grief  of  wife  and  children. 

Robert,  with  a  cloak  flung  about  him,  still  stayed  to  talk 
to  the  doctor,  to  carry  one  of  the  baigneur's  sobbing  grand- 
children to  its  mother  in  the  village.  Then,  at  last,  Catherine 
got  hold  of  him,  and  he  submitted  to  be  taken  home,  shivering, 
and  deeply  depressed  by  the  failure  of  his  efforts.  A  violent 
gastric  and  lung  chill  declared  itself  almost  immediately,  and 
for  three  days  he  had  been  anxiously  ill.  Catherine,  miser- 
able, distrusting  the  local  doctor,  and  not  knowing  how  to  get 
hold  of  a  better  one,  had  never  left  him  night  or  day.  '  I  had 
not  the  heart  to  write  even  to  you,'  she  wrote  to  her  mother. 
'  I  could  think  of  nothing  but  trying  one  thing  after  another. 
Now  he  has  been  in  bed  eight  days,  and  is  much  better.  He 
talks  of  getting  up  to-morrow,  and  declares  he  must  go  home 
next  week.  I  have  tried  to  persuade  him  to  stay  here  another 
fortnight,  but  the  thought  of  his  work  distresses  him  so  much 
that  I  hardly  dare  urge  it.  I  cannot  say  how  I  dread  the  jour- 
ney. He  is  not  fit  for  it  in  any  way.' 

Rose  folded  up  the  letter,  her  face  softened  to  a  most  womanly 
gravity.  Hugh  Flaxman  paused  a  moment  outside  the  door, 
his  hands  on  his  sides,  considering. 

'  I  shall  not  go  on  to  Scotland,'  he  said ;  '  Mrs.  Elsmere  must 
not  be  left.  I  will  go  off  there  at  once.' 

In  Rose's  soberly-sweet  looks  as  he  left  her,  Hugh  Flaxman 
saw  for  an  instant,  with  the  stirring  of  a  joy  as  profound  as  it 
was  delicate,  not  the  fanciful  enchantress  of  the  day  before,  but 
his  wife  that  was  to  be.  And  yet  she  held  him  to  his  bargain. 
All  that  his  lips  touched  as  he  said  good-bye  was  the  little 
bunch  of  yellow  briar  roses  she  gave  him  from  her  belt. 

Thirty  hours  later  he  was  descending  the  long  hill  from 
Sassetdt  to  Petites  Dalles.  It  was  the  1st  of  September.  A 
chilly  west  wind  blew  up  the  dust  before  him  and  stirred  the 


570  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

parched  leafage  of  the  valley.  He  knocked  at  the  door,  of 
which  the  woodwork  was  all  peeled  and  blistered  by  the  sun. 
Catherine  herself  opened  it. 

'  This  is  kind — this  is  like  yourself  ! '  she  said,  after  a  first 
stare  of  amazement,  when  he  had  explained  himself.  '  He  is  in 
there,  much  better.' 

Robert  looked  up,  stupefied,  as  Hugh  Flaxman  entered. 
But  he  sprang  up  with  his  old  brightness. 

'  Well,  this  is  friendship !  What  on  earth  brings  you  here, 
old  fellow  ?  Why  aren't  you  in  the  stubbles  celebrating  St. 
Partridge  ? ' 

Hugh  Flaxman  said  what  he  had  to  say  very  shortly,  but  so 
as  to  make  Robert's  eyes  gleam,  and  to  bring  his  thin  hand  with 
a  sort  of  caressing  touch  upon  Flaxman's  shoulder. 

'  I  shan't  try  to  thank  you — Catherine  can  if  she  likes.  How 
relieved  she  will  be  about  that  bothering  journey  of  ours  !  How- 
ever, I  am  really  ever  so  much  better.  It  was  very  sharp  while 
it  lasted ;  and  the  doctor  no  great  shakes.  But  there  never 
was  such  a  woman  as  my  wife ;  she  pulled  me  through  !  And 
now  then,  sir,  just  kindly  confess  yourself  a  little  more  plainly. 
What  brought  you  and  my  sisters-in-law  together  ?  You  need 
not  try  and  persuade  me  that  Long  Whindale  is  the  natural 
gate  of  the  Lakes,  or  the  route  intended  by  Heaven  from 
London  to  Scotland,  though  I  have  no  doubt  you  tried  that  little 
fiction  on  them.' 

Hugh  Flaxman  laughed,  and  sat  down  very  deliberately. 

'  I  am  glad  to  see  that  illness  has  not  robbed  you  of  that  per- 
spicacity for  which  you  are  so  remarkable,  Elsmere.  Well,  the 
day  before  yesterday  I  asked  your  sister  Rose  to  marry  me. 
She ' 

'  Go  on,  man,'  cried  Robert,  exasperated  by  his  pause. 

'  I  don't  know  how  to  put  it,'  said  Flaxman  calmly.  '  For 
six  months  we  are  to  be  rather  more  than  friends,  and  a  good 
deal  less  than  fiances.  I  am  to  be  allowed  to  write  to  her.  You 
may  imagine  how  seductive  it  is  to  one  of  the  worst  and  laziest 
letter-writers  in  the  three  kingdoms  that  his  fortunes  in  love 
should  be  made  to  depend  on  his  correspondence.  I  may  scold 
her  if  she  gives  me  occasion.  And  in  six  months,  as  one  says  to 
a  publisher,  "  the  agreement  will  be  open  to  revision." ' 

Robert  stared. 

'  And  you  are  not  engaged  ? ' 

'  Not  as  I  understand  it,'  replied  Flaxman.  '  Decidedly 
not ! '  he  added  with  energy,  remembering  that  very  platonic 
farewell. 

Robert  sat  with  his  hands  on  his  knees,  ruminating. 

'  A  fantastic  thing,  the  modern  young  woman  !  Still  I  think 
I  can  understand.  There  may  have  been  more  than  mere  caprice 
in  it.' 

His  eye  met  his  friend's  significantly. 

'  I  suppose  so,'  said  Flaxman  quietly.     Not  even  for  Robert's 


CHAP.  XLVIII  GAIN  AND  LOSS  571 

hem-fit  was  he  going  to  reveal  any  details  of  that  scene  on  High 
Fell.  'Never  mind,  old  fellow,  I  am  content.  And,  indeed, 
faute  de  mieux,  I  should  be  content  with  anything  that  brought 
me  nearer  to  her,  were  it  but  by  the  thousandth  of  an  inch.' 

Robert  grasped  his  hand  affectionately. 

'Catherine,'  he  called  through  the  door,  'never  mind  the 
supper  ;  let  it  burn.  Flaxman  brings  news.' 

Catherine  Listened  to  the  story  with  amazement.  Certainly 
her  ways  would  never  have  been  as  her  sister's. 

'  Are  we  supposed  to  know  ? '  she  asked,  very  naturally. 

'She  never  forbade  me  to  tell,'  said  Flaxmaii  smiling.  'I 
think,  however,  if  I  were  you,  I  should  say  nothing  about  it — 
yet.  I  told  her  it  was  part  of  our  bargain  that  she  should  ex- 
plain my  letters  to  Mrs.  Leyburn.  I  gave  her  free  leave  to 
invent  any  fairy  tale  she  pleased,  but  it  was  to  be  her  invention, 
not  mine.' 

Neither  Robert  nor  Catherine  were  very  well  pleased.  But 
there  was  something  reasuring  as  well  as  comic  in  the  stoicism 
with  which  Flaxman  took  his  position.  And  clearly  the  matter 
must  be  left  to  manage  itself. 

Next  morning  the  weather  had  improved.  Robert,  his  hand 
on  Flaxman's  arm,  got  down  to  the  beach.  Flaxman  watched 
him  critically,  did  not  like  some  of  his  symptoms,  but  thought 
on  the  whole  he  must  be  recovering  at  the  normal  rate,  con- 
sidering how  severe  the  attack  had  been. 

'  What  do  you  think  of  him  1 '  Catherine  asked  him  next  day, 
with  all  her  soul  in  her  eyes.  They  had  left  Robert  established 
in  a  sunny  nook,  and  were  strolling  on  along  the  sands. 

'  I  think  you  must  get  him  home,  call  in  a  first-rate  doctor, 
and  keep  him  quiet,'  said  Flaxman.  'He  will  be  all  right 
presently.' 

'  How  can  we  keep  him  quiet  ? '  said  Catherine,  with  a  mo- 
mentary despair  in  her  fine  pale  face.  '  All  day  long  and  all 
night  long  he  is  thinking  of  his  work.  It  is  like  something  fiery 
burning  the  heart  out  ot  him.' 

Flaxman  felt  the  truth  of  the  remark  during  the  four  days 
of  calm  autumn  weather  he  spent  with  them  before  the  return 
journey.  Robert  would  talk  to  him  for  hours,  now  on  the 
sands,  witli  the  gray  infinity  of  sea  before  them,  now  pacing 
the  bounds  of  their  little  room  till  fatigue  made  him  drop 
heavily  into  his  long  chair ;  and  the  burden  of  it  all  was  the 
religious  future  of  the  working-class.  He  described  the  scene 
in  the  Club,  and  brought  out  the  dreams  swarming  in  his  mind, 
presenting  them  for  Flaxman's  criticism,  and  dealing  with  them 
himself,  with  that  startling  mixture  of  acute  common-sense  and 
eloquent  passion  which  had  always  made  him  so  effective  as  an 
initiator.  Flaxman  listened  dubiously  at  first,  as  he  generally 
listened  to  Elsmere,  and  then  was  carried  away,  not  by  the 
beliefs,  but  by  the  man.  He  found  his  pleasure  in  dallying 
with  the  in;i»uificent  possibility  of  the  Church  ;  doubt  with  him 


572  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

applied  to  all  propositions,  whether  positive  or  negative ;  and 
lie  had  the  dislike  of  the  aristocrat  and  the  cosmopolitan  for 
the  provincialisms  of  religious  dissent.  Political  dissent  or 
social  reform  was  another  matter.  Since  the  Revolution,  every 
generous  child  of  the  century  has  been  open  to  the  fascination 
of  political  or  social  Utopias.  But  religion  !  What — what  is 
truth  ?  Why  not  let  the  old  things  alone  1 

However,  it  was  through  the  social  passion,  once  so  real  in 
him,  and  still  living,  in  spite  of  disillusion  and  self-mockery, 
that  Robert  caught  him,  had  in  fact  been  slowly  gaining  pos- 
session of  him  all  these  months. 

'Well,'  said  Flaxman  one  day,  'suppose  I  grant  you  that 
Christianity  of  the  old  sort  shows  strong  signs  of  exhaustion, 
even  in  England,  and  in  spite  of  the  Church  expansion  we  hear 
so  much  about ;  and  suppose  I  believe  with  you  that  things  will 
go  badly  without  religion — what  then  ?  Who  can  have  a  re- 
ligion for  the  asking  ? ' 

'  But  who  can  have  it  without  1  Seek,  that  you  may  find. 
Experiment ;  try  new  combinations.  If  a  thing  is  going  that 
humanity  can't  do  without,  and  you  and  I  believe  it,  what  duty 
is  more  urgent  for  us  than  the  effort  to  replace  it  ? ' 

Flaxman  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

'  What  will  you  gain  ?    A  new  sect  ? ' 

'  Possibly.  But  what  we  stand  to  gain  is  a  new  social  bond,' 
was  the  flashing  answer — '  a  new  compelling  force  in  man  and 
in  society.  Can  you  deny  that  the  world  wants  it  ?  What  are 
you  economists  and  sociologists  of  the  new  type  always  pining 
for  ?  Why,  for  that  diminution  of  the  self  in  man  which  is  to 
enable  the  individual  to  see  the  world's  ends  clearly,  and  to  care 
not  only  for  his  own  but  for  his  neighbour's  interest,  which  is 
to  make  the  rich  devote  themselves  to  the  poor,  and  the  poor 
bear  with  the  rich.  If  man  only  would,  he  could,  you  say,  solve 
all  the  problems  which  oppress  him.  It  is  man's  will  which  is 
eternally  defective,  eternally  inadequate.  Well,  the  great  re- 
ligions of  the  world  are  the  stimulants  by  which  the  power  at 
the  root  of  things  has  worked  upon  this  sluggish  instrument  of 
human  destiny.  Without  religion  you  cannot  make  the  will 
equal  to  its  tasks.  Our  present  religion  fails  us ;  we  must,  we 
will  have  another  ! ' 

He  rose  and  began  to  pace  along  the  sands,  now  gently 
glowing  in  the  warm  September  evening,  Flaxman  beside 
him. 

A  new  religion  I  Of  all  words,  the  most  tremendous  !  Flax- 
man pitifully  weighed  against  it  the  fraction  of  force  fretting 
and  surging  in  the  thin  elastic  frame  beside  him.  He  knew 
well,  however— few  better — that  the  outburst  was  not  a  mere 
dream  and  emptiness.  There  was  experience  behind  it  —  a 
burning,  driving  experience  of  actual  fact. 

Presently  Robert  said,  with  a  change  of  tone,  'I  must  have 
that  whole  block  of  warehouses,  Flaxman.' 


CHAP.  XLIX  GAIN  AND  LOSS  573 

'  Must  you  ? '  said  Flaxman,  relieved  by  the  drop  from  specu- 
lation to  the  practical.  '  Why  1 ' 

'  Look  here  ! '  And  sitting  down  again  on  a  sand-hill  over- 
grown with  wild  grasses  and  mats  of  sea-thistle,  the  poor  pale 
reformer  began  to  draw  out  the  details  of  his  scheme  on  its 
material  side.  Three  floors  of  rooms  brightly  furnished,  well 
lit  and  warmed  ;  a  large  hall  for  the  Sunday  lectures,  concerts, 
entertainments,  and  story -telling ;  rooms  for  the  boys'  club ; 
two  rooms  for  women  and  girls,  reached  by  a  separate  entrance ; 
a  library  and  reading-room  open  to  both  sexes,  well  stored  with 
books,  and  made  beautiful  by  pictures  •  three  or  four  smaller 
rooms  to  serve  as  committee  rooms  and  for  the  purposes  of  the 
Naturalist  Club  which  had  been  started  in  May  on  the  Mure- 
well  plan  ;  and,  if  possible,  a  gymnasium. 

'  Money  ! '  he  said,  drawing  up  with  a  laugh  in  mid-career. 
'  There's  the  rub,  of  course.  But  I  shall  manage  it.' 

To  judge  from  the  past,  Flaxman  thought  it  extremely  likely 
that  he  would.  He  studied  the  cabalistic  lines  Elsmere's  stick 
had  made  in  the  sand  for  a  minute  or  two  ;  then  he  said  dryly, 
'  I  will  take  the  first  expense  :  and  draw  on  me  afterwards  up 
to  five  hundred  a  year,  for  the  first  four  years.' 

Robert  turned  upon  him  and  grasped  his  hand. 

'  I  do  not  thank  you,'  he  said  quietly,  after  a  moment's  pause ; 
'  the  work  itself  will  do  that.' 

Again  they  strolled  on,  talking,  plunging  into  details,  till 
Flaxman's  pulse  beat  as  fast  as  Robert's  ;  so  full  of  infectious 
hope  and  energy  was  the  whole  being  of  the  man  before  him. 

I  can  take  in  the  women  and  girls  now,'  Robert  said  once. 
'  Catherine  has  promised  to  superintend  it  all.' 

Then  suddenly  something  struck  the  mobile  mind,  and  he 
stood  an  instant  looking  at  his  companion.  It  was  the  first 
time  he  had  mentioned  Catherine's  name  in  connection  with 
the  North  R work.  Flaxman  could  not  mistake  the  emo- 
tion, the  unspoken  thanks  in  those  eyes.  He  turned  away, 
nervously  knocking  off  the  ashes  of  his  cigar.  .  But  the  two 
men  understood  each  other. 


CHAPTER  XLIX 

Two  days  later  they  were  in  London  again.  Robert  was  a  great 
deal  better,  and  beginning  to  kick  against  invalid  restraints. 
All  men  have  their  pet  irrationalities.  Elsmere's  irrationality 
was  an  aversion  to  doctors,  from  the  point  of  view  of  his  own 
ailments.  He  had  an  unbounded  admiration  for  them  as  a 
class,  and  would  have  nothing  to  say  to  them  as  individuals 
that  he  could  possibly  help.  Flaxman  was  sarcastic ;  Cath- 
erine looked  imploring  in  vain.  He  vowed  that  he  was  treating 
himself  with  a  skill  any  professional  might  envy,  and  went  his 


574  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

way.  And  for  a  time  the  stimulus  of  London  and  of  his  work 
seemed  to  act  favourably  upon  him.  After  his  first  welcome  at 
the  Club  he  came  home  with  bright  eye  and  vigorous  step,  de- 
claring that  he  was  another  man. 

Flaxman  established  himself  in  St.  James's  Place.  Town  was 
deserted ;  the  partridges  at  Greenlaws  clamoured  to  be  shot ; 
the  head -keeper  wrote  letters  which  would  have  melted  the 
heart  of  a  stone.  Flaxman  replied  recklessly  that  any  decent 
fellow  in  the  neighbourhood  was  welcome  to  shoot  his  birds — a 
reply  which  almost  brought  upon  him  the  resignation  of  the 
outraged  keeper  by  return  of  post.  Lady  Charlotte  wrote  and 
remonstrated  with  him  for  neglecting  a  landowner's  duties, 
inquiring  at  the  same  time  what  he  meant  to  do  with  regard 
to  '  that  young  lady.'  To  which  Flaxman  replied  calmly  that 
he  had  just  come  back  from  the  Lakes,  where  he  had  done,  not 
indeed  all  that  he  meant  to  do,  but  still  something.  Miss  Ley- 
burn  and  he  were  not  engaged,  but  he  was  on  probation  for  six 
months,  and  found  London  the  best  place  for  getting  through  it. 

'  So  far,'  he  said,  '  I  am  getting  on  well,  and  developing  an 
amount  of  energy  especially  in  the  matter  of  correspondence, 
which  alone  ought  to  commend  the  arrangement  to  the  relations 
of  an  idle  man.  But  we  must  be  left  "  to  dream  our  dream  unto 
ourselves  alone."  One  word  from  anybody  belonging  to  me  to 
anybody  belonging  to  her  on  the  subject,  and —  But  threats 
are  puerile.  For  the  present,  dear  aunt,  I  am  your  devoted 
nephew,  HUGH  FLAXMAN.' 

'  On  probation  I ' 

Flaxman  chuckled  as  he  sent  off  the  letter. 

He  stayed  because  he  was  too  restless  to  be  anywhere  else, 
and  because  he  loved  the  Elsmeres  for  Rose's  sake  and  his  own. 
He  thought  moreover  that  a  cool-headed  friend  with  an  eye  for 
something  else  in  the  world  than  religious  reform  might  be 
useful  just  then  to  Elsmere,  and  he  was  determined  at  the  same 
time  to  see  what  the  reformer  meant  to  be  at. 

In  the  first  place,  Robert's  attention  was  directed  to  getting 
possession  of  the  whole  block  of  buildings,  in  which  the  existing 
school  and  lecture-rooms  took  up  only  the  lowest  floor.  This 
was  a  matter  of  some  difficulty,  for  the  floors  above  were  em- 
ployed in  warehousing  goods  belonging  to  various  minor  import 
trades,  and  were  held  on  tenures  of  different  lengths.  However, 
by  dint  of  some  money  and  much  skill,  the  requisite  clearances 
were  effected  during  September  and  part  of  October.  By  the 
end  of  that  month  all  but  the  top  floor,  the  tenant  of  which 
refused  to  be  dislodged,  fell  into  Elsmere's  hands. 

Meanwhile,  at  a  meeting  held  every  Sunday  after  lecture — a 
meeting  composed  mainly  of  artisans  of  the  district,  but  includ- 
ing also  Robert's  helpers  from  the  West,  and  a  small  sprinkling 
of  persons  interested  in  the  man  and  his  work  from  all  parts— 


CHAP.  XT.IX  GAIN  AND  LOSS  575 

the  details  of  'The  New  Brotherhood  of  Christ'  were  being 
hammered  out.  Catherine  was  generally  present,  sitting  a 
little  apart,  with  a  look  which  Flaxman,  who  now  knew  her 
well,  was  always  trying  to  decipher  afresh — a  sort  of  sweet 
aloofness,  as  though  the  spirit  behind  it  saw,  down  the  vistas 
of  the  future,  ends  and  solutions  which  gave  it  courage  to 
endure  the  present.  Murray  Edwardes  too  was  always  there. 
It  often  struck  Flaxman  afterwards  that  in  Robert's  attitude 
towards  Edwardes  at  this  time,  in  his  constant  desire  to  bring 
him  forward,  to  associate  him  with  himself  as  much  as  possible 
in  the  government  and  formation  of  the  infant  society,  there 
was  a  half -conscious  prescience  of  a  truth  that  as  yet  none 
knew,  not  even  the  tender  wife,  the  watchful  friend. 

The  meetings  were  of  extraordinary  interest.  The  men,  the 
great  majority  of  whom  had  been  disciplined  and  moulded 
for  months  by  contact  with  Elsmere's  teaching  and  Elsmere's 
thought,  showed  a  responsiveness,  a  receptivity,  even  a  power 
of  initiation  which  often  struck  Flaxman  with  wonder.  Were 
these  the  men  he  had  seen  in  the  Club-hall  on  the  night  of 
Robert's  address — sour,  stolid,  brutalised,  hostile  to  all  things 
in  heaven  and  earth  ? 

'And  we  go  on  prating  that  the  age  of  saints  is  over,  the 
r61e  of  the  individual  lessening  day  by  day  !  Fool !  go  and  be 
a  saint,  go  and  give  yourself  to  ideas  ;  go  and  live  the  life  hid 
with  Christ  in  God,  and  see,' — so  would  run  the  quick  comment 
of  the  observer. 

But  incessant  as  was  the  reciprocity,  the  interchange  and 
play  of  feeling  between  Robert  and  the  wide  following  growing 
up  around  him,  it  was  plain  to  Flaxman  that  although  he  never 
moved  a  step  without  carrying  his  world  with  him,  he  was 
never  at  the  mercy  of  his  world.  Nothing  was  ever  really  left 
to  chance.  Through  all  these  strange  debates,  which  began 
rawly  and  clumsily  enough,  and  grew  every  week  more  and 
more  absorbing  to  all  concerned,  Flaxman  was  convinced  that 
hardly  any  rule  or  formula  of-  the  new  society  was  ultimately 
adopted  which  had  not  been  for  long  in  Robert  s  mind — thought 
out  and  brought  into  final  shape,  perhaps,  on  the  Petites  Dalles 
sands.  It  was  an  unobtrusive  art,  his  art  of  government,  but  a 
most  effective  one. 

At  any  moment,  as  Flaxman  often  felt,  at  any  rate  in  the 
early  meetings,  the  discussions  as  to  the  religious  practices 
which  were  to  bind  together  the  new  association  might  have 
passed  the  line,  and  become  puerile  or  grotesque.  At  any 
moment  the  jarring  characters  and  ambitions  of  the  men 
Elsmere  had  to  deal  with  might  have  dispersed  that  delicate 
atmosphere  of  moral  sympathy  and  passion  in  which  the  whole 
new  birth  seemed  to  have  been  conceived,  and  upon  the  main- 
tenance of  which  its  fruition  and  development  depended.  But 
as  soon  as  Elsmere  appeared,  difficulties  vanished,  enthusiasm 
sprang  up  again.  The  rules  of  the  new  society  came  simply 


576  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

and  naturally  into  being,  steeped  and  haloed,  as  it  were,  from 
the  beginning,  in  the  passion  and  genius  of  one  great  heart. 
The  fastidious  critical  instinct  in  Flaxman  was  silenced  no 
less  than  the  sour,  half -educated  analysis  of  such  a  man  as 
Lestrange. 

In  the  same  way  all  personal  jars  seemed  to  melt  away  beside 
him.  There  were  some  painful  things  connected  with  the  new 
departure.  Wardlaw,  for  instance,  a  conscientious  Comtist, 
refusing  stoutly  to  admit  anything  more  than  'an  unknowable 
reality  behind  phenomena,'  was  distressed  and  affronted  by  the 
strongly  religious  bent  Elsmere  was  giving  to  the  work  he  had 
begun.  Lestrange,  who  was  a  man  of  great  though  raw  ability, 
who  almost  always  spoke  at  the  meetings,  and  whom  Robert 
was  bent  on  attaching  to  the  society,  had  times  when  the  things 
he  was  half  inclined  to  worship  one  day  he  was  much  more 
inclined  to  burn  the  next  in  the  sight  of  all  men,  and  when  the 
smallest  failure  of  temper  on  Robert's  part  might  have  entailed 
a  disagreeable  scene,  and  the  possible  formation  of  a  harassing 
left  wing. 

But  Robert's  manner  to  Wardlaw  was  that  of  a  grateful 
younger  brother.  It  was  clear  that  the  Comtist  could  not 
formally  join  the  Brotherhood.  But  all  the  share  and  influence 
that  could  be  secured  him  in  the  practical  working  of  it  was 
secured  him.  And  what  was  more,  Robert  succeeded  in  infus- 
ing his  own  delicacy,  his  own  compunctions  on  the  subject,  into 
the  men  and  youths  who  had  profited  in  the  past  by  Warcllaw's 
rough  self-devotion.  So  that  if,  through  much  that  went  on 
now,  he  could  only  be  a  spectator,  at  least  he  was  not  allowed 
to  feel  himself  an  alien  or  forgotten. 

As  to  Lestrange,  against  a  man  who  was  as  ready  to  laugh 
as  to  preach,  and  into  whose  ardent  soul  nature  had  infused  a 
saving  sense  of  the  whimsical  in  life  and  character,  cynicism 
and  vanity  seemed  to  have  no  case.  Robert's  quick  temper  had 
been  wonderfully  disciplined  by  life  since  his  Oxford  days.  He 
had  now  very  little  of  that  stift-neckedness,  so  fatal  to  the  aver- 
age reformer,  which  makes  a  man  insist  on  all  or  nothing  from 
his  followers.  He  took  what  each  man  had  to  give.  Nay, 
he  made  it  almost  seem  as  though  the  grudging  support  of 
Lestrange,  or  the  critical  half  -  patronising  approval  of  the 
young  barrister  from  the  West  who  came  down  to  listen  to 
him,  and  made  a  favour  of  teaching  in  his  night-school,  were 
as  precious  to  him  as  was  the  whole-hearted,  the  self-abandoning 
veneration,  which  the  majority  of  those  about  him  had  begun 
to  show  towards  the  man  in  whom,  as  Charles  Richards  said, 
they  had  '  seen  God.' 

At  last  by  the  middle  of  November  the  whole  great  building, 
with  the  exception  of  the  top  floor,  was  cleared  and  ready  for 
use.  Robert  felt  the  same  joy  in  it,  in  its  clean  paint,  the  half- 
filled  shelves  in  the  library,  the  pictures  standing  against  the 
walls  ready  to  be  hung,  the  rolls  of  bright -coloured  matting 


CHAP.  XLIX  GAIN  AND  LOSS  577 

ready  to  be  laid  down,  as  he  had  felt  in  the  Murewell  Institute. 
He  and  Flaxman,  helped  by  a  voluntary  army  of  men,  worked 
at  it  from  morning  till  night.  Only  Catherine  could  ever  per- 
suade him  to  remember  that  he  was  not  yet  physically  himself. 

Then  came  the  day  when  the  building  was  formally  opened, 
when  the  gilt  letters  over  the  door,  '  The  New  Brotherhood  of 
Christ,'  shone  out  into  the  dingy  street,  and  when  the  first 
enrolment  of  names  in  the  book  of  the  Brotherhood  took  place. 

For  two  hours  a  continuous  stream  of  human  beings  sur- 
rounded the  little  table  beside  which  Elsmere  stood,  inscribing 
their  names,  and  receiving  from  him  the  silver  badge,  bearing 
the  head  of  Christ,  which  was  to  be  the  outward  and  conspic- 
uous sign  of  membership.  Men  came  of  all  sorts :  the  intel- 
ligent well-paid  artisan,  the  pallid  clerk  or  small  accountant, 
stalwart  warehousemen,  huge  carters  and  draymen,  the  boy 
attached  to  each  by  the  laws  of  the  profession  often  straggling 
lumpishly  behind  his  master.  Women  were  there  :  wives  who 
came  because  their  lords  came,  or  because  Mr.  Elsmere  had  been 
'  that  good '  to  them  that  anything  they  could  do  to  oblige  him 
'  they  would,  and  welcome '  j  prim  pupil- teachers,  holding  them- 
selves with  straight  superior  shoulders ;  children,  who  came 
trooping  in,  grinned  up  into  Robert's  face  and  retreated  again 
with  red  cheeks,  the  silver  badge  tight  clasped  in  hands  which 
not  even  much  scrubbing  could  make  passable. 

Flaxman  stood  and  watched  it  "from  the  side.  It  was  an 
extraordinary  scene :  the  crowd,  the  slight  figure  on  the  plat- 
form, the  two  great  inscriptions,  which  represented  the  only 
'  articles '  of  the  new  faith,  gleaming  from  the  freshly  coloured 
walls — 

1  In  Thee,  0  Eternal,  have  1  put  my  trust ; ' 

'  This  do  in  remembrance  of  Me  ; ' 

— the  recesses  on  either  side  of  the  hall  lined  with  white  marble, 
and  destined,  the  one  to  hold  the  names  of  the  living  members 
of  the  Brotherhood,  the  other  to  commemorate  those  who  had 
passed  away  (empty  this  last  save  for  the  one  poor  name  of 
'  Charles  Richards ') ;  the  copies  of  Giotto's  Paduan  Virtues — 
faith,  fortitude,  charity,  and  the  like — which  broke  the  long 
wall  at  intervals.  The  cynic  in  the  onlooker  tried  to  assert 
itself  against  the  feeling  with  which  the  air  seemed  overcharged. 
In  vain. 

'  Whatever  comes  of  it,'  Flaxman  said  to  himself  with  strong 
involuntary  conviction,  '  whether  he  fails  or  no,  the  spirit  that 
is  moving  here  is  the  same  spirit  that  spread  the  Church,  the 
spirit  that  sent  out  Benedictine  and  Franciscan  into  the  world, 
that  fired  the  children  of  Luther,  or  Calvin,  or  George  Fox  ;  the 
spirit  of  devotion,  through  a  man,  to  an  idea  ;  through  one 
much-loved,  much-trusted  soul  to  some  eternal  verity,  newly 
caught,  newly  conceived,  behind  it.  There  is  no  approaching 
the  idea  for  the  masses  except  through  the  human  life ;  there 


578  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

is  no  lasting  power  for  the  man  except  as  the  slave  of  the 
idea ! ' 

A  week  later  he  wrote  to  his  aunt  as  follows.  He  could  not 
write  to  her  of  Rose,  he  did  not  care  to  write  of  himself,  and  he 
knew  that  Elsmere's  club  address  had  left  a  mark  even  on  her 
restless  and  overcrowded  mind.  Moreover,  he  himself  was 
absorbed. 

'  We  are  in  the  full  stream  of  religion-making.  I  watch  it 
with  a  fascination  you  at  a  distance  cannot  possibly  understand, 
even  when  my  judgment  demurs,  and  my  intelligence  protests 
that  the  thing  cannot  live  without  Elsmere,  and  that  Elsmere's 
life  is  a  frail  one.  After  the  ceremony  of  enrolment  which  I 
described  to  you  yesterday  the  Council  of  the  New  Brotherhood 
was  chosen  by  popular  election,  and  Elsmere  gave  an  address. 
Two-thirds  of  the  council,  I  should  think,  are  working-men,  the 
rest  of  the  upper  class  ;  Elsmere,  of  course,  president. 

'  Since  then  the  first  religious  service  under  the  new  consti- 
tution has  been  held.  The  service  is  extremely  simple,  and  the 
basis  of  the  whole  is  "new  bottles  for  the  new  wine."  The 
opening  prayer  is  recited  by  everybody  present  standing.  It 
is  rather  an  act  of  adoration  and  faith  than  a  prayer,  properly 
so  called.  It  represents,  in  fact,  the  placing  of  the  soul  in  the 
presence  of  God.  The  mortal  turns  to  the  eternal ;  the  ignor- 
ant and  imperfect  look  away  from  themselves  to  the  knowledge 
and  perfection  of  the  All-Holy.  It  is  Elsmere's  drawing  up,  I 
imagine — at  any  rate  it  is  essentially  modern,  expressing  the 
modern  spirit,  answering  to  modern  need,  as  I  imagine  the  first 
Christian  prayers  expressed  the  spirit  and  answered  to  the 
need  of  an  earlier  day. 

'  Then  follows  some  passage  from  the  life  of  Christ.  Elsmere 
reads  it  and  expounds  it,  in  the  first  place,  as  a  lecturer  might 
expound  a  passage  of  Tacitus,  historically  and  critically.  His 
explanation  of  miracle,  his  efforts  to  make  his  audience  realise 
the  germs  of  miraculous  belief  which  each  man  carries  with  him 
in  the  constitution  and  inherited  furniture  of  his  mind,  are 
some  of  the  most  ingenious — perhaps  the  most  convincing — I 
have  ever  heard.  My  heart  and  my  head  have  never  been  very 
much  at  one,  as  you  know,  on  this  matter  of  the  marvellous 
clement  in  religion. 

'  But  then  when  the  critic  has  done,  the  poet  and  the  believer 
begins.  Whether  he  has  got  hold  of  the  true  Christ  is  another 
matter ;  but  that  the  Christ  he  preaches  moves  the  human 
heart  as  much  as — and  in  the  case  of  the  London  artisan,  more 
than — the  current  orthodox  presentation  of  him,  I  begin  to 
have  ocular  demonstration. 

'  I  was  present,  for  instance,  at  his  children's  Sunday  class 
the  other  day.  He  had  brought  them  up  to  the  story  of  the 
Crucifixion,  reading  from  the  Revised  Version,  and  amplifying 
whereArer  the  sense  required  it.  Suddenly  a  little  girl  laid  her 
head  on  the  desk  before  her,  and  with  choking  sobs  implored 


CHAP.  XLIX  GAIN  AND  LOSS  579 

him  not  to  go  on.  The  whole  class  seemed  ready  to  do  the 
same.  The  pure  human  pity  of  the  story — the  contrast  between 
the  innocence  and  the  pain  of  the  sufferer — seemed  to  be  more 
than  they  could  bear.  And  there  was  no  comforting  sense  of  a 
jugglery  by  which  the  suffering  was  not  real  after  all,  and  the 
sufferer  not  man  but  God. 

'He  took  one  of  them  upon  his  knee  and  tried  to  console 
them.  But  there  is  something  piercingly  penetrating  and 
austere  even  in  the  consolations  of  this  new  faith.  He  did  but 
remind  the  children  of  the  burden  of  gratitude  laid  upon  them. 
"  Would  you  let  him  suffer  so  much  in  vain  ?  His  suffering  has 
made  you  and  me  happier  and  better  to-day,  at  this  moment, 
than  we  could  have  been  without  Jesus.  You  will  understand 
how,  and  why,  more  clearly  when  you  grow  up.  Let  us  in 
return  keep  him  in  our  hearts  always,  and  obey  his  words  !  It 
is  all  you  can  do  for  his  sake,  just  as  all  you  could  do  for  a 
mother  who  died  would  be  to  follow  her  wishes  and  sacredly 
keep  her  memory." 

'  That  was  about  the  gist  of  it.  It  was  a  strange  little  scene, 
wonderfully  suggestive  and  pathetic. 

'  But  a  few  more  words  about  the  Sunday  service.  After  the 
address  came  a  hymn.  There  are  only  seven  hymns  in  the 
little  service  book,  gathered  out  of  the  finest  we. have.  It  is 
supposed  that  in  a  short  time  they  will  become  so  familiar  to 
the  members  of  the  Brotherhood  that  they  will  be  sung  readily 
by  heart.  The  singing  of  them  in  the  public  service  alternates 
with  an  equal  number  of  psalms.  And  both  psalms  and  hymns 
are  meant  to  be  recited  or  sung  constantly  in  the  homes  of  the 
members,  and  to  become  part  of  the  everyday  life  of  the 
Brotherhood.  They  have  been  most  carefully  chosen,  and  a  sort 
of  ritual  importance  has  been  attached  to  them  from  the  begin- 
ning. Each  day  in  the  week  has  its  particular  hymn  or  psalm. 

'Then  the  whole  wound  up  with  another  short  prayer,  also 
repeated  standing,  a  commendation  of  the  individual,  the 
Brotherhood,  the  nation,  the  world,  to  God.  The  phrases  of  it 
are  terse  and  grand.  One  can  see  at  once  that  it  has  laid  hold 
of  the  popular  sense,  the  popular  memory.  The  Lord's  Prayer 
followed.  Then,  after  a  silent  pause  of  "  recollection,"  Elsmere 
dismissed  them. 

' "  Go  in  peace,  in  the  love  of  God,  and  in  the  memory  of  His 
servant,  Jesus." 

'  I  looked  carefully  at  the  men  as  they  were  tramping  out. 
Some  of  them  were  among  the  Secularist  speakers  you  and  I 
heard  at  the  club  in  April.  In  my  wonder,  I  thought  of  a  say- 
ing of  Vinet's  :  "  C'est  pour  la  religion  que  le  peupte  a  le  plus  de 
talent ;  c'est  en  religion  gu'il  montre  le  j)lus  d'esprit." ' 

In  a  later  letter  he  wrote — 

'  I  have  not  yet  described  to  you  what  is  perhaps  the  most 
characteristic,  the  most  binding  practice  of  the  New  Brother- 
hood. It  is  that  which  has  raised  most  angry  comment,  cries  of 


580  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vil 

"  profanity,"  "  wanton  insult,"  and  what  not.  I  came  upon  it 
yesterday  in  an  interesting  way.  I  was  working  with  Elsmere 
at  the  arrangement  of  the  library,  which  is  now  becoming  a 
most  fascinating  place,  under  the  management  of  a  librarian 
chosen  from  the  neighbourhood,  when  he  asked  me  to  go  and 
take  a  message  to  a  carpenter  who  has  been  giving  us  voluntary 
help  in  the  evenings  after  his  clay's  work.  He  thought  that  as 
it  was  the  dinner  hour,  and  the  man  worked  in  the  dock  close 
by,  I  might  find  him  at  home.  I  went  off  to  the  model  lodging- 
house  where  I  was  told  to  look  for  him,  mounted  the  common 
stairs,  and  knocked  at  his  door.  Nobody  seemed  to  hear  me, 
and  as  the  door  was  ajar  I  pushed  it  open. 

'  Inside  was  a  curious  sight. 

'  The  table  was  spread  with  the  midday  meal.  Round  the  table 
stood  four  children,  the  eldest  about  fourteen,  and  the  youngest 
six  or  seven.  At  one  end  of  it  stood  the  carpenter  himself  in 
his  working  apron,  a  brawny  Saxon,  bowed  a  little  by  his  trade. 
Before  him  was  a  plate  of  bread,  and  his  horny  hands  were 
resting  on  it.  The  street  was  noisy ;  they  had  not  heard  my 
knock ;  and  as  I  pushed  open  the  door  there  was  an  old  coat 
hanging  over  the  corner  of  it  which  concealed  me. 

'  Something  in  the  attitudes  of  all  concerned  reminded  me, 
kept  me  where  I  was,  silent. 

'  The  father  lifted  his  right  hand. 

'  "  The  Master  said,  '  This  do  in  remembrance  of  Me  ! ' " 

'The  children  stooped  for  a  moment  in  silence,  then  the 
youngest  said  slowly,  in  a  little  softened  cockney  voice  that 
touched  me  extraordinarily, — 

' "  Jesus,  we  remember  Thee  always  !  " 

'  It  was  the  appointed  response.  As  she  spoke  I  recollected 
the  child  perfectly  at  Elsmere's  class.  I  also  remembered  that 
she  had  no  mother  ;  that  her  mother  had  died  of  cancer  in  June, 
visited  and  comforted  to  the  end  by  Elsmere  and  his  wife. 

'  Well,  the  great  question  of  course  remains — is  there  a 
sufficient  strength  of.  feeling  and  conviction  behind  these  things? 
If  so,  after  all,  everything  was  new  once,  and  Christianity  was 
but  modified  Judaism.' 

'  December  22. 

'  I  believe  I  shall  soon  be  as  deep  in  this  matter  as  Elsmere. 
In  Elgood  Street  great  preparations  are  going  on  for  Christmas. 
But  it  will  be  a  new  sort  of  Christmas.  We  shall  hear  very 
little,  it  seems,  of  angels  and  shepherds,  and  a  great  deal  of  the 
humble  childhood  of  a  little  Jewish  boy  whose  genius  grown  to 
maturity  transformed  the  Western  world.  To  see  Elsmere,  with 
his  boys  and  girls  about  him,  trying  to  make  them  feel  them- 
selves the  heirs  and  fellows  of  the  Nazarene  child,  to  make  them 
understand  something  of  the  lessons  that  child  must  have  learnt, 
the  sights  he  must  have  seen,  and  the  thoughts  that  must  have 
come  to  him,  is  a  spectacle  of  which  I  will  not  miss  more  than  I 
can  help.  Don't  imagine,  however,  that  I  am  converted  exactly ! 


CHAP,  xux  GAIN  AND  LOSS  581 

— but  only  that  I  am  more  interested  and  stimulated  than  I 
have  been  for  years.  And  don't  expect  me  for  Christmas.  I 
shall  stay  here. 

'  New  Year's  Day. 

'  I  am  writing  from  the  library  of  the  New  Brotherhood.  The 
amount  of  activity,  social,  educational,  religious,  of  which  this 
great  building  promises  to  be  the  centre  is  already  astonishing. 
Everything,  of  course  including  the  constitution  of  the  infant 
society,  is  as  yet  purely  tentative  and  experimental.  But  for  a 
scheme  so  young,  things  are  falling  into  working  order  with 
wonderful  rapidity.  Each  department  is  worked  by  committees 
under  the  central  council.  Elsmere,  of  course,  is  ex-officio  chair- 
man of  a  large  proportion ;  Wardlaw,  Mackay,  I,  and  a  few 
other  fellows  "  run  "  the  rest  for  the  present.  But  each  com- 
mittee contains  woi'king-men  ;  and  it  is  the  object  of  everybody 
concerned  to  make  the  workman  element  more  and  more  real 
and  efficient.  What  with  the  "tax"  on  the  members  which  was 
fixed  by  a  general  meeting,  and  the  contributions  from  outside, 
the  society  already  commands  a  fair  income.  But  Elsmere  is 
anxious  not  to  attempt  too  much  at  once,  and  will  go  slowly 
and  train  his  workers. 

'Music,  it  seems,  is  to  be  a  great  feature  in  the  future.  I 
have  my  own  projects  as  to  this  part  of  the  business,  which, 
however,  I  forbid  you  to  guess  at. 

'By  the  rules  of  the -Brotherhood,  every  member  is  bound  to 
some  work  in  connection  with  it  during  the  year,  but  little  or 
much,  as  he  or  she  is  able.  And  every  meeting,  every  under- 
taking of  whatever  kind,  opens  with  the  special  "word"  or 
formula  of  the  society,  "  This  do  in  remembrance  of  Me." ' 

'  January  6. 

'  Besides  the  Sunday  lectures,  Elsmere  is  pegging  away  on 
Saturday  evenings  at  "  The  History  of  the  Moral  Life  in  Man." 
It  is  a  remarkable  course,  and  very  largely  attended  by  people 
of  all  sorts.  He  tries  to  make  it  an  exposition  of  the  leading 
principles  of  the  new  movement,  of  "  that  continuous  and  only 
revelation  of  God  in  life  and  nature,"  which  is  in  reality  the 
basis  of  his  whole  thought.  By  the  way,  the  letters  that  are 
pouring  in  upon  him  from  all  parts  are  extraordinary.  They 
show  an  amount  and  degree  of  interest  in  ideas  of  the  kind 
which  are  surprising  to  a  Laodicean  like  me.  But  he  is  not 
surprised — says  he  always  expected  it — and  that  there  are 
thousands  who  only  want  a  rallying-point. 

'  His  personal  effect,  the  love  that  is  felt  for  him,  the  passion 
and  energy  of  the  nature — never  has  our  generation  seen  any- 
thing to  equal  it.  As  you  perceive,  I  am  reduced  to  taking  it 
all  seriously,  and  don't  know  what  to  make  of  him  or  myselt. 

1  She,  poor  soul!  is  now  always  with  him,  comes  down  with 
him  day  after  day,  and  works  away.  She  no  more  believes  in 


582  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

his  ideas,  I  think,  than  she  ever  did  ;  but  all  her  antagonism  is 
gone.  In  the  midst  of  the  stir  about  him  her  face  often  haunts 
me.  It  has  changed  lately ;  she  is  no  longer  a  young  woman, 
but  so  refined,  so  spiritual ! 

'But  he  is  ailing  and  fragile.     There  is  the  one  cloud  on  a 
scene  that  fills  me  with  increasing  wonder  and  reverence.' 


CHAPTER  L 

ONE  cold  Sunday  afternoon  in  January,  Flaxman,  descending 
the  steps  of  the  New  Brotherhood,  was  overtaken  by  a  young 
Dr.  Edmondson,  an  able  young  physician,  just  set  up  for 
himself  as  a  consultant,  who  had  only  lately  attached  himself  to 
Elsmere,  and  was  now  helping  him  with  eagerness  to  organise 
a  dispensary.  Young  Edmondson  and  Flaxman  exchanged  a 
few  words  on  Elsmere's  lecture,  and  then  the  doctor  said 
abruptly, — 

'  I  don't  like  his  looks  nor  his  voice.  How  long  has  he  been 
hoarse  like  that  ? ' 

1  More  or  less  for  the  last  month.     He  is  very  much  worried 

it  himself,  and  talks  of  clergyman's  throat.     He  had  a  touch 

it,  it  appears,  once  in  the  country.' 

'  Clergyman's  throat  ?'  Edmondson  shook  his  head  dubiously. 
'  It  may  be.  I  wish  he  would  let  me  overhaul  him.' 

'  I  wish  he  would  ! '  said  Flaxman  devoutly.  '  I  will  see  what 
I  can  do.  I  will  get  hold  of  Mrs.  Elsmere.' 

Meanwhile  Robert  and  Catherine  had  driven  home  together. 
As  they  entered  the  study  she  caught  his  hands,  a  suppressed 
and  exquisite  passion  gleaming  in  her  face. 

'  You  did  not  explain  Him  !     You  never  will ! ' 

He  stood,  held  by  her,  his  gaze  meeting  hers.  Then  in  an 
instant  his  face  changed,  blanched  before  her — he  seemed  to 
gasp  for  breath — she  was  only  just  able  to  save  him  from 
falling.  It  was  apparently  another  swoon  of  exhaustion.  As 
she  knelt  beside  him  on  the  floor,  having  done  for  him  all  she 
could,  watching  his  return  to  consciousness,  Catherine's  look 
would  have  terrified  any  of  those  who  loved  her.  There  are 
some  natures  which  are  never  blind,  never  taken  blissfully 
unawares,  and  which  taste  calamity  and  grief  to  the  very  dregs. 

'  Robert,  to-morrow  you  will  see  a  doctor  ? '  she  implored  him 
when  at  last  he  was  safely  in  bed — white,  but  smiling. 

He  nodded. 

'  Send  for  Edmondson.  What  I  mind  most  is  this  hoarseness,' 
he  said,  in  a  voice  that  was  little  more  than  a  tremulous 
whisper. 

Catherine  hardly  closed  her  eyes  all  night.  The  room,  the 
house,  seemed  to  her  stifling,  oppressive,  like  a  grave.  And,  by 


by  i 
of  it 


CHAP.  L  GAIN  AND  LOSS  583 

ill  luck,  with  the  morning  came  a  long  expected  letter,  not 
indeed  from  the  squire,  but  about  the  squire.  Robert  had  been 
for  some  time  expecting  a  summons  to  Murewell.  The  squire 
had  written  to  him  last  in  October  from  Clarens,  on  the  Lake 
of  Geneva.  Since  then  weeks  had  passed  without  bringing 
Elsmere  any  news  of  him  at  all.  Meanwhile  the  growth  of  the 
New  Brotherhood  had  absorbed  its  founder,  so  that  the  inquiries 
which  should  have  been  sent  to  Murewell  had  been  postponed. 
The  letter  which  reached  him  now  was  from  old  Meyrick.  '  The 
squire  has  had  another  bad  attack,  and  is  much  weaker.  But 
his  mind  is  clear  again,  and  he  greatly  desires  to  see  you.  If 
you  can,  come  to-morrow.' 

'  His  mind  is  clear  again  ! '  Horrified  by  the  words  and  by 
the  images  they  called  up,  remorseful  also  for  his  own  long 
silence,  Robert  sprang  up  from  bed,  where  the  letter  had  been 
brought  to  him,  and  presently  appeared  downstairs,  where 
Catherine,  believing  him  safely  captive  for  the  morning,  was 
going  through  some  household  business. 

'  I  must  go,  I  must  go  ! '  he  said  as  he  handed  her  the  letter. 
'  Meyrick  puts  it  cautiously,  but  it  may  be  the  end  ! ' 

Catherine  looked  at  him  in  despair. 

'Robert,  you  are  like  a  ghost  yourself,  and  I  have  sent  for 
Dr.  Edmondson.' 

'Put  him  off  till  the  day  after  to-morrow.  Dear  little  wife, 
listen  ;  my  voice  is  ever  so  much  better.  Murewell  air  will  do 
me  good.'  She  turned  away  to  hide  the  tears  in  her  eyes.  Then 
she  tried  fresh  persuasions,  but  it  was  useless.  His  look  was 
glowing  and  restless.  She  saw  he  felt  it  a  call  impossible  to 
disobey.  A  telegram  was  sent  to  Edmondson,  and  Robert 
drove  off  to  Waterloo. 

Out  of  the  fog  of  London  it  was  a  mild,  sunny  winter's  day. 
Robert  breathed  more  freely  with  every  mile.  His  eyes  took 
note  of  every  landmark  in  the  familiar  journey  with  a  thirsty 
eagerness.  It  was  a  year  and  a  half  since  he  had  travelled  it. 
He  forgot  his  weakness,  the  exhausting  pressure  and  publicity 
of  his  new  work.  The  past  possessed  him,  thrust  out  the 
present.  Surely  he  had  been  up  to  London  for  the  day  and 
was  going  back  to  Catherine  ! 

At  the  station  he  hailed  an  old  friend  among  the  cabmen. 

'Take  me  to  the  corner  of  the  Murewell  lane,  Tom.  Then 
you  may  drive  on  my  bag  to  the  Hall,  and  I  shall  walk  over  the 
common.' 

The  man  urged  on  his  tottering  old  steed  with  a  will.  In  the 
streets  of  the  little  town  Robert  saw  several  acqaintances  who 
stopped  and  stared  at  the  apparition.  Were  the  houses,  the 
people  real,  or  was  it  all  a  hallucination — his  flight  and  his 
return,  so  unthought  of  yesterday,  so  easy  and  swift  to-day  1 

By  the  time  they  were  out  on  the  wild  ground  between  the 
market  town  and  Murewell,  Robert's  spirits  were  as  buoyant  as 
thistle-down.  He  and  the  driver  kept  up  an  incessant  gossip 


584  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

over  the  neighbourhood,  and  he  jumped  down  from  the  carriage 
as  the  man  stopped  with  the  alacrity  of  a  boy. 

'  Go  on,  Tom ;  see  if  I  am  not  there  as  soon  as  you.' 

'  Looks  most  uncommon  bad,'  the  man  muttered  to  himself 
as  his  horse  shambled  off.  '  Seems  as  spry  as  a  lark  all  the  same.' 

Why,  the  gorse  was  out,  positively  out  in  January  !  and  the 
thrushes  were  singing  as  though  it  were  March.  Robert 
stopped  opposite  a  bush  covered  with  timid  half -opened 
blooms,  and  thought  he  had  seen  nothing  so  beautiful  since 
he  had  last  trodden  that  road  in  spring.  Presently  he  was  in 
the  same  cart-track  he  had  crossed  on  the  night  of  his  confes- 
sion to  Catherine  ;  he  lingered  beside  the  same  solitary  fir  on  the 
brink  of  the  ridge.  A  winter  world  lay  before  him  ;  soft  brown 
woodland,  or  reddish  heath  and  fern,  struck  sideways  by  the 
sun,  clothing  the  earth's  bareness  everywhere — curling  mists — 
blue  points  of  distant  hill — a  gray  luminous  depth  of  sky. 

The  eyes  were  moist,  the  lips  moved.  There  in  the  place  of 
his  old  anguish  he  stood  and  blessed  God  ! — not  for  any  personal 
happiness,  but  simply  for  that  communication  of  Himself  which 
may  make  every  hour  of  common  living  a  revelation. 

Twenty  minutes  later,  leaving  the  park  gate  to  his  left,  he 
hurried  up  the  lane  leading  to  the  vicarage.  One  look !  he 
might  not  be  able  to  leave  the  squire  later.  The  gate  of  the 
wood-path  was  ajar.  Surely  just  inside  it  he  should  find 
Catherine  in  her  garden  hat,  the  white-frocked  child  dragging 
behind  her  !  And  there  was  the  square  stone  house,  the  brown 
cornfield,  the  red-brown  woods  !  Why,  what  had  the  man  been 
doing  with  the  study  ?  White  blinds  showed  it  was  a  bedroom 
now.  Vandal !  Besides,  how  could  the  boys  have  free  access 
except  to  that  ground-floor  room  ?  And  all  that  pretty  stretch 
of  grass  under  the  acacia  had  been  cut  up  into  stiff  little  lozenge- 
shaped  beds,  filled,  he  supposed,  in  summer  with  the  properest 
geraniums.  He  should  never  dare  to  tell  that  to  Catherine. 

He  stood  and  watched  the  little  significant  signs  of  change 
in  this  realm,  which  had  been  once  his  own,  with  a  dissatisfied 
mouth,  his  undermind  filled  the  while  with  tempestuous  yearn- 
ing and  affection.  In  that  upper  room  he  had  lain  through  that 
agonised  night  of  crisis ;  the  dawn-twitterings  of  the  summer 
birds  seemed  to  be  still  in  his  ears.  And  there,  in  the  distance, 
was  the  blue  wreath  of  smoke  hanging  over  Mile  End.  Ah ! 
the  new  cottages  must  be  warm  this  winter.  The  children  did 
not  lie  in  the  wet  any  longer — thank  God !  Was  there  time 
just  to  run  down  to  Irwin's  cottage,  to  have  a  look  at  the 
Institute  ? 

He  had  been  standing  on  the  farther  side  of  the  road  from 
the  rectory  that  he  might  not  seem  to  be  spying  out  the  land 
and  his  successor's  ways  too  closely.  Suddenly  he  found  himself 
clinging  to  a  gate  near  him  that  led  into  a  field.  He  was  shaken 
by  a  horrible  struggle  for  breath.  The  self  seemed  to  be 
foundering  in  a  stifling  sea,  and  fought  like  a  drowning  thing. 


CHAP.  L  GAIN  AND  LOSS  585 

When  the  moment  passed,  he  looked  round  him  bewildered, 
drawing  his  hand  across  his  eyes.  The  world  had  grown  black 
— the  sun  seemed  to  be  scarcely  shining.  Were  those  the  sounds 
of  children's  voices  on  the  hill,  the  rumbling  of  a  cart — or  was 
it  all,  sight  and  sound  alike,  mirage  and  delirium  ? 

With  difficulty,  leaning  on  his  stick  as  though  he  were  a  man 
of  seventy,  he  groped  his  way  back  to  the  Park.  There  he  sank 
down,  still  gasping,  among  the  roots  of  one  of  the  great  cedars 
near  the  gate.  After  a  while  the  attack  passed  off  and  he 
found  himself  able  to  walk  on.  But  the  joy,  the  leaping  pulse 
of  half  an  hour  ago,  were  gone  from  his  veins.  Was  that  the 
river — the  house  ?  He  looked  at  them  with  dull  eyes.  All  the 
light  was  lowered.  A  veil  seemed  to  lie  between  him  and  the 
familiar  things. 

However,  by  the  time  he  reached  the  door  of  the  Hall  will 
and  nature  had  reasserted  themselves,  and  he  knew  where  he 
was  and  what  he  had  to  do. 

Vincent  flung  the  door  open  with  his  old  lorldly  air. 

'  Why,  sir  !  Mr.  Elsmere  ! ' 

The  butler's  voice  began  on  a  note  of  joyful  surprise,  sliding 
at  once  into  one  of  alarm.  He  stood  and  stared  at  this  ghost  of 
the  old  rector. 

Elsmere  grasped  his  hand,  and  asked  him  to  take  him  into 
the  dining-room  and  give  him  some  wine  before  announcing 
him.  Vincent  ministered  to  him  with  a  long  face,  pressing  all 
the  alcoholic  resources  of  the  Hall  upon  him  in  turn.  The 
squire  was  much  better,  he  declared,  and  had  been  carried  down 
to  the  library. 

'But,  lor,  sir,  there  ain't  much  to  be  said  for  your  looks 
neither — seems  as  if  London  didn't  suit  you,  sir.' 

Elsmere  explained  feebly  that  he  had  been  suffering  from 
his  throat,  and  had  overtired  himself  by  walking  over  the 
common.  Then,  recognising  from  a  distorted  vision  of  him- 
self in  a  Venetian  mirror  hanging  by  that  something  of  his 
natural  colour  had  returned  to  him,  he  rose  and  bade  Vincent 
announce  him. 

'And  Mrs.  Darcy?'  he  asked,  as  they  stepped  out  into  the 
hall  again. 

'  Oh,  Mrs.  Darcy,  sir,  she's  very  well,'  said  the  man,  but,  as 
it  seemed  to  llobert,  with  something  of  an  embarrassed  air. 

He  followed  Vincent  down  the  long  passage — haunted  by  old 
memories,  by  the  old  sickening  sense  of  mental  anguish — to  the 
curtained  door.  Vincent  ushered  him  in.  There  was  a  stir 
of  feet,  and  a  voice,  but  at  first  he  saw  nothing.  The  room 
was  very  much  darkened.  Then  Meyrick  emerged  into  dis- 
tinctness. 

'  Squire,  here  is  Mr.  Elsmere !  Well,  Mr.  Elsmere,  sir,  I'm 
sure  we're  very  much  obliged  to  you  for  meeting  the  squire's 
wishes  so  promptly.  You'll  find  him  poorly,  Mr.  Elsmere,  but 
mending — oh  yes,  mending,  sir — no  doubt  of  it.' 


586  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vil 

Elsmere  began  to  perceive  a  figure  by  the  fire.  A  bony  hand 
was  advanced  to  him  out  of  the  gloom. 

'  That'll  do,  Meyrick.     You  won't  be  wanted  till  the  evening.' 

The  imperious  note  in  the  voice  struck  Robert  with  a  sudden 
sense  of  relief.  After  all,  the  squire  was  still  capable  of  tramp- 
ling on  Meyrick. 

In  another  minute  the  door  had  closed  on  the  old  doctor,  and 
the  two  men  were  alone.  Robert  was  beginning  to  get  used  to 
the  dim  light.  Out  of  it  the  squire's  face  gleamed  almost  as 
whitely  as  the  tortured  marble  of  the  Medusa  just  above  their 
heads. 

'It's  some  inflammation  in  the  eyes,'  the  squire  explained 
briefly,  '  that's  made  Meyrick  set  up  all  this  d — d  business  of 
blinds  and  shutters.  I  don't  mean  to  stand  it  much  longer. 
The  eyes  are  better,  and  I  prefer  to  see  my  way  out  of  the 
world,  if  possible.' 

'  But  you  are  recovering  ?'  Robert  said,  laying  his  hand  affec- 
tionately on  the  old  man's  knee. 

'  I  have  added  to  my  knowledge,'  said  the  squire  drily.  '  Like 
Heine,  I  am  qualified  to  give  lectures  in  heaven  on  the  ignor- 
ance of  doctors  on  earth.  And  I  am  not  in  bed,  which  I  was 
last  week.  For  Heaven's  sake  don't  ask  questions.  If  there  is 
a  loathsome  subject  on  earth  it  is  the  subject  of  the  human 
body.  Well,  I  suppose  my  message  to  you  dragged  you  away 
from  a  thousand  things  you  had  rather  be  doing.  What  are  you 
so  hoarse  for?  Neglecting  yourself  as  usual,  for  the  sake  of 
"the  people,"  who  wouldn't  even  subscribe  to  bury  you ?  Have 
you  been  working  up  the  Apocrypha  as  I  recommended  you  last 
tune  we  met  ? ' 

Robert  smiled. 

'For  the  last  four  months,  Squire,  I  have  been  doing  two 
things  with  neither  of  which  had  you  much  sympathy  in  old 
days — holiday-making  and  "  slumming." ' 

'Oh,  I  remember,'  interrupted  the  squire  hastily.  'I  was 
low  last  week,  and  read  the  Church  papers  by  way  of  a  counter- 
irritant.  You  have  been  starting  a  new  religion,  I  see.  A  new 
religion  !  Humph  ! ' 

The  great  head  fell  forward,  and  through  the  dusk  Robert 
caught  the  sarcastic  gleam  of  the  eyes. 

'You  are  hardly  the  man  to  deny,'  he  said,  undisturbed, 
'  that  the  old  ones  laissent  a  desirer.' 

'  Because  there  are  old  abuses,  is  that  any  reason  why  you 
should  go  and  set  up  a  brand-new  one — an  ugly  anachronism 
besides,'  retorted  the  squire.  'However,  you  and  I  have  no 
common  ground — never  had.  I  say  know,  you  say  feel.  Where 
is  the  difference,  after  all,  between  you  and  any  charlatan  of  the 
lot  ?  Well,  how  is  Madame  de  Netteville  ? ' 

'  I  have  not  seen  her  for  six  months,'  Robert  replied,  with 
equal  abruptness. 

The  squire  laughed  a  little  under  his  breath. 


OH  A  p.  L  GAIN  AND  LOSS  587 

'  What  did  you  think  of  her  ? ' 

'  Very  much  what  you  told  me  to  think — intellectually,'  re- 
plied Robert,  facing  him,  but  flushing  with  the  readiness  of 
physical  delicacy. 

'  Well,  I  certainly  never  told  you  to  think  anything — morally,' 
said  the  squire.  'The  word  moral  has  no  relation  to  her. 
Whom  did  you  see  there  1 ' 

The  catechism  was  naturally  most  distasteful  to  its  object, 
but  Elsmere  went  through  with  it,  the  squire  watching  him  for 
a  while  with  an  expression  which  had  a  spark  of  malice  in  it. 
It  is  not  unlikely  that  some  gossip  of  the  Lady  Aubrey  sort  had 
reached  him.  Elsmere  had  always  seemed  to  him  oppressively 
good.  The  idea  that  Madame  de  Netteville  had  tried  her  arts 
upon  him  was  not  without  its  piquancy. 

But  while  Robert  was  answering  a  question  he  was  aware  of 
a  subtle  change  in  the  squire's  attitude — a  relaxation  of  his 
own  sense  of  tension.  After  a  minute  he  bent  forward,  peering 
through  the  darkness.  The  squire's  head  had  fallen  back,  his 
mouth  was  slightly  open,  and  the  breath -came  lightly,  quiver  - 
ingly  through.  The  cynic  of  a  moment  ago  had  dropped  sud- 
denly in^  a  sleep  of  more  than  childish  weakness  and  defence- 
lessness. 

Robert  remained  bending  forward,  gazing  at  the  man  who 
had  once  meant  so  much  to  him. 

Strange  white  face,  sunk  in  the  great  chair !  Behind  it 
glimmered  the  Donatello  figure,  and  the  divine  Hermes,  a 
glorious  shape  in  the  dusk,  looking  scorn  on  human  decrepitude. 
All  round  spread  the  dim  walls  of  books.  The  life  they  had 
nourished  was  dropping  into  the  abyss  out  of  ken — they  re- 
mained. Sixty  years  of  effort  and  slavery  to  end  so — a  river 
lost  in  the  sands  ! 

Old  Meyrick  stole  in  again,  and  stood  looking  at  the  sleeping 
squire. 

'  A  bad  sign !  a  bad  sign ! '  he  said,  and  shook  his  head 
mournfully. 

After  he  had  made  an  effort  to  take  some  food  which  Vincent 
pressed  upon  him,  Robert,  conscious  of  a  stronger  physical 
malaise  than  had  ever  vet  tormented  him,  was  crossing  the 
hall  again,  when  he  suddenly  saw  Mrs.  Darcy  at  the  door  of  a 
room  which  opened  into  the  hall.  He  went  up  to  her  with  a 
warm  greeting. 

'  Are  you  going  in  to  the  squire  ?    Let  us  go  together.' 

She  looked  at  him  with  no  surprise,  as  though  she  had  seen 
him  the  day  before,  and  as  he  spoke  she  retreated  a  step  into 
the  room  behind  her,  a  curious  film,  so  it  seemed  to  him,  dark- 
ening her  small  gray  eyes. 

'  the  squire  is  not  here.  He  is  gone  away.  Have  you  seen 
my  white  mice  ?  Oh,  they  are  such  darlings !  Only,  one  of 
1  liciu  is  ill,  and  they  won't  let  me  have  the  doctor.' 

Her  voice  sank  into  the  most  pitiful  plaintiveness.      She 


588  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

stood  in  the  middle  of  the  room,  pointing  with  an  elfish  finger 
to  a  large  cage  of  white  mice  which  stood  in  the  window.  The 
room  seemed  full  besides  of  other  creatures.  Robert  stood 
rooted,  looking  at  the  tiny  withered  figure  in  the  black  dress, 
its  snowy  hair  and  diminutive  face  swathed  in  lace,  with  a  per- 
plexity into  which  there  slipped  an  involuntary  shiver.  Sud- 
denly he  became  aware  of  a  woman  by  the  fire,  a  decent,  strong- 
looking  body  in  gray,  who  rose  as  his  look  turned  to  her.  Their 
eyes  met ;  her  expression  and  the  little  jerk  of  her  head  to- 
wards Mrs.  Darcy,  who  was  now  standing  by  the  cage  coaxing 
the  mice  with  the  weirdest  gestures,  were  enough.  Robert 
turned,  and  went  out  sick  at  heart.  The  careful  exquisite 
beauty  of  the  great  hall  struck  him  as  something  mocking 
and  anti-human. 

No  one  else  in  the  house  said  a  word  to  him  of  Mrs.  Darcy. 
In  the  evening  the  squire  talked  much  at  intervals,  but  in 
another  key.  He  insisted  on  a  certain  amount  of  light,  and, 
leaning  on  Robert's  arm,  went  feebly  round  the  bookshelves. 
He  took  out  one  of  the  volumes  of  the  Fathers  that  Newman 
had  given  him. 

'  When  I  think  of  the  hours  I  wasted  over  this  barbarous  rub- 
bish,' he  said,  his  blanched  fingers  turning  the  leaves  vindict- 
ively, '  and  of  the  other  hours  I  maundered  away  in  services 
and  self-examination !  Thank  Heaven,  however,  the  germ  of 
revolt  and  sanity  was  always  there.  And  when  once  I  got  to 
it,  I  learnt  my  lesson  pretty  quick.' 

Robert  paused,  his  kind  inquiring  eyes  looking  down  on  the 
shrunken  squire. 

'  Oh,  not  one  you  have  any  chance  of  learning,  my  good 
friend,'  said  the  other  aggressively.  '  And  after  all  it's  simple. 
Go  to  your  grave  with  your  eyes  open — that's  all.  But  men  don't 
learn  it,  somehow.  Newman  was  incapable — so  are  you.  All 
the  religions  are  nothing  but  so  many  vulgar  anaesthetics,  which 
only  the  few  have  courage  to  refuse. 

'  Do  you  want  me  to  contradict  you  ? '  said  Robert,  smiling ;  '  I 
am  quite  ready.' 

The  squire  took  no  notice.  Presently,  when  he  was  in  his 
chair  again,  he  said  abruptly,  pointing  to  a  mahogany  bureau 
in  the  window,  'The  book  is  all  there — both  parts,  first  and 
second.  Publish  it  if  you  please.  If  not,  throw  it  into  the  fire. 
Both  are  equally  indifferent  to  me.  It  has  done  its  work ;  it 
has  helped  me  through  half  a  century  of  living.' 

'  It  shall  be  to  me  a  sacred  trust,'  said  Elsmere  with  emotion. 
'  Of  course  if  you  don't  publish  it,  I  shall  publish  it.' 

'As  you  please.  Well,  then,  if  you  have  nothing  more 
rational  to  tell  me  about,  tell  me  of  this  ridiculous  Brotherhood 
of  yours.' 

Robert,  so  adjured,  began  to  talk,  but  with  difficulty.  The 
words  would  not  flow,  and  it  was  almost  a  relief  when  in  the 
middle  that  strange  creeping  sleep  overtook  the  squire  again. 


CHAP.  L  GAIN  AND  LOSS  589 

Meyrick,  who  was  staying  in  the  house,  and  who  had  been 
coming  in  and  out  through  the  evening,  eyeing  Elsmere,  now 
that  there  was  more  light  on  the  scene,  with  almost  as  much 
anxiety  and  misgiving  as  the  squire,  was  summoned.  The 
squire  was  put  into  his  carrying-chair.  Vincent  and  a  male 
attendant  appeared,  and  he  was  borne  to  his  room,  Meyrick 
peremptorily  refusing  to  allow  Robert  to  lend  so  much  as  a 
tinger  to  the  performance.  They  took  him  up  the  library  stairs, 
through  the  empty  book-rooms  and  that  dreary  room  which  had 
been  his  fathers,  and  so  into  his  own.  By  the  time  they  set 
him  down  he  was  quite  awake  and  conscious  again. 

'  It  can't  be  said  that  I  follow  my  own  precepts,'  he  said  to 
llobert  grimly  as  they  put  him  down.  '  Not  much  of  the  open 
eye  about  this.  I  shall  sleep  myself  into  the  unknown  as 
sweetly  as  any  saint  in  the  calendar.' 

Robert  was  going  when  the  squire  called  him  back. 

'  You'll  stay  to-morrow,  Elsmere  ? ' 

'  Of  course,  if  you  wish  it.' 

The  wrinkled  eyes  fixed  him  intently. 

'  Why  did  you  ever  go  ? ' 

'  As  1  told  you  before,  Squire,  because  there  was  nothing  else 
for  an  honest  man  to  do.' 

The  squire  turned  round  with  a  frown. 

'  What  the  deuce  are  you  dawdling  about,  Benson  ?  Give  me 
my  stick  and  get  me  out  of  this.' 

By  midnight  all  was  still  in  the  vast  pile  of  Murewell.  Out- 
side, the  night  was  slightly  frosty.  A  clear  moon  shone  over 
the  sloping  reaches  of  the  park  ;  the  trees  shone  silverly  in  the 
cold  light,  their  black  shadows  cast  along  the  grass.  Robert 
found  himself  quartered  in  the  Stuart  room,  where  James  II. 
had  slept,  and  where  the  tartan  hangings  of  the  ponderous 
carved  bed,  and  the  rose  and  thistle  reliefs  of  the  walls  and 
ceilings,  untouched  for  two  hundred  years,  bore  witness  to  the 
loyal  preparations  made  by  some  bygone  Wendover.  He  was 
mortally  tired,  but  by  way  of  distracting  his  thoughts  a  little 
from  the  squire,  and  that  other  tragedy  which  the  great  house 
sheltered  somewhere  in  its  walls,  he  took  from  his  coat-pocket  a 
French  Anthologie  which  had  been  Catherine's  birthday  gift  to 
him,  and  read  a  little  before  he  fell  asleep. 

Then  he  slept  profoundly — the  sleep  of  exhaustion.  Suddenly 
lie  found  himself  sitting  up  in  bed,  his  heart  beating  to  suffoca- 
tion, strange  noises  in  his  ears. 

A  cry  '  Help  ! '  resounded  through  the  wide  empty  galleries. 

He  flung  on  his  dressing-gown,  and  ran  out  in  the  direction 
of  the  squire's  room. 

The  hideous  cries  and  scuffling  grew  more  apparent  as  he 
reached  it.  At  that  moment  Benson,  the  man  who  had  helped 
to  carry  the  squire,  ran  up. 

'  My  God,  sir  ! '  he  said,  deadly  white,  'another  attack  ! ' 

The  squire's  room  was  empty,  but  the  door  into  the  lumber- 


590  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

room  adjoining  it  was  open,  and  the  stifled  sounds  came  through 
it. 

They  rushed  in  and  found  Meyrick  struggling  in  the  grip  of  a 
white  figure,  that  seemed  to  have  the  face  of  a  fiend  and  the 
grip  of  a  tiger.  Those  old  bloodshot  eyes — those  wrinkled  hands 
on  the  throat  of  the  doctor — horrible  ! 

They  released  poor  Meyrick,  who  staggered  bleeding  into  the 
squire's  room.  Then  Robert  and  Benson  got  the  squire  back  by 
main  force.  The  whole  face  was  convulsed,  the  poor  shrunken 
limbs  rigid  as  iron.  Meyrick,  who  was  sitting  gasping,  by  a 
superhuman  effort  of  will  mastered  himself  enough  to  give 
directions  for  a  strong  opiate.  Benson  managed  to  control  the 
madman  while  Robert  found  it.  Then  between  them  they  got 
it  swallowed. 

But  nature  had  been  too  quick  for  them.  Before  the  opiate 
could  have  had  time  to  work,  the  squire  shrank  together  like  a 
puppet  of  which  the  threads  are  loosened,  and  fell  heavily  side- 
ways out  of  his  captors'  hands  on  to  the  bed.  They  laid  him 
there,  tenderly  covering  him  from  the  January  cold.  The 
swollen  eyelids  fell,  leaving  just  a  thread  of  white  visible  under- 
neath, the  clenched  hands  slowly  relaxed ;  the  loud  breathing 
seemed  to  be  the  breathing  of  death. 

Meyrick,  whose  wound  on  the  head  had  been  hastily  bound 
up,  threw  himself  beside  the  bed.  The  night-light  beyond  cast 
a  grotesque  shadow  of  him  on  the  wall,  emphasising,  as  though 
in  mockery,  the  long  straight  back,  the  ragged  whiskers,  the 
strange  ends  and  horns  of  the  bandage.  But  the  passion  in  the 
old  face  was  as  purely  tragic  as  any  that  ever  spoke  through  the 
lips  of  an  Antigone  or  a  Gloucester. 

'  The  last — the  last ! '  he  said,  choked,  the  tears  falling  down 
his  lined  cheeks  on  to  the  squire's  hand.  '  He  can  never  rally 
from  this.  And  I  was  fool  enough  to  think  yesterday  I  had 
pulled  him  through  ! ' 

Again  a  long  gaze  of  inarticulate  grief ;  then  he  looked  up  at 
Robert. 

'He  wouldn't  have  Benson  to-night.  I  slept  in  the  next 
room  with  the  door  ajar.  A  few  minutes  ago  I  heard  him  mov- 
ing. I  was  up  in  an  instant,  and  found  him  standing  by  that 
door,  peering  through,  bare-footed,  a  wind  like  ice  coming  up. 
He  looked  at  me,  frowning,  all  in  a  flame.  " My  father"  he 
said — " my  father — he  went  that  way — what  do  you  want  here? 
Keep  back  !  "  I  threw  myself  on  him  :  he  had  something  sharp 
which  scratched  me  on  the  temple  ;  I  got  that  away  from  him, 
but  it  was  his  hands  '—and  the  old  man  shuddered.  '  I  thought 
they  would  have  done  for  me  before  any  one  could  hear,  and 
that  then  he  would  kill  himself  as  his  father  did.' 

Again  he  hung  over  the  figure  on  the  bed — his  own  withered 
hand  stroking  that  of  the  squire  with  a  yearning  affection. 

'  When  was  the  last  attack  ? '  asked  Robert  sadly. 

'  A  month  ago,  sir,  just  after  they  got  back.     Ah,  Mr.  Elsmere. 


CHAP.  L  GAIN  AND  LOSS  591 

he  suffered.  And  he's  been  so  lonely.  No  one  to  cheer  him,  no 
one  to  please  him  with  his  food — to  put  his  cushions  right— to 
coax  him  up  a  bit,  and  that — and  his  poor  sister  too,  always 
there  before  his  eyes.  Of  course  he  would  stand  to  it  he  liked 
to  be  alone.  But  I'll  never  believe  men  are  made  so  unlike  one 
to  the  other.  The  Almighty  meant  a  man  to  have  a  wife  or  a 
child  about  him  when  he  comes  to  the  last.  He  missed  you,  sir, 
when  you  went  away.  Not  that  he'd  say  a  word,  but  he  moped. 
His  books  didn't  seem  to  please  him,  nor  anything  else.  I've 
just  broke  my  heart  over  him  this  last  year.' 

There  was  silence  a  moment  in  the  big  room,  hung  round 
with  the  shapes  of  bygone  Wendovers.  The  opiate  had  taken 
effect.  The  squire's  countenance  was  no  longer  convulsed. 
The  great  brow  was  calm  ;  a  more  than  common  dignity  and 
peace  spoke  from  the  long  peaked  face.  Robert  bent  over  him. 
The  madman,  the  cynic,  had  passed  away :  the  dying  scholar 
and  thinker  lay  before  him. 

'  Will  he  rally  ? '  he  asked,  under  his  breath. 

MeyrifcB  shook  his  head. 

'  I  doubt  it.  It  has  exhausted  all  the  strength  he  had  left. 
The  heart  is  failing  rapidly.  I  think  he  will  sleep  away.  And, 
Mr.  Elsmere,  you  go — go  and  sleep.  Benson  and  I  '11  watch. 
Oh,  my  scratch  is  nothing,  sir.  I'm  used  to  a  rough-and-turnble 
life.  But  you  go.  If  there's  a  change  we'll  wake  you.' 

Elsmere  bent  down  and  kissed  the  squire's  forehead  tenderly, 
as  a  son  might  have  done.  By  this  time  lie  himself  could  hardly 
stand.  He  crept  away  to  his  own  room,  his  nerves  still  quiver- 
ing with  the  terror  of  that  sudden  waking,  the  horror  of  that 
struggle. 

It  was  impossible  to  sleep.  The  moon  was  at  the  full  outside. 
He  drew  back  the  curtains,  made  up  the  fire,  and,  wrapping 
himself  in  a  fur  coat  which  Flaxman  had  lately  forced  upon 
him,  sat  where  he  could  see  the  moonlit  park,  and  still  be  within 
the  range  of  the  blaze. 

As  the  excitement  passed  away  a  reaction  of  feverish  weak- 
ness set  in.  The  strangest  whirlwind  of  thoughts  fled  through 
him  in  the  darkness,  suggested  very  often  by  the  figures  on  the 
seventeenth  -  century  tapestry  which  lined  the  walls.  Were 
those  the  trees  in  the  wood-path  ?  Surely  that  was  Catherine's 
figure,  trailing — and  that  dome — strange  !  Was  he  still  walking 
in  Grey's  funeral  procession,  the  Oxford  buildings  looking  sadly 
clown  ?  Death  here  !  Death  there  !  Death  everywhere,  yawn- 
ing under  life  from  the  beginning  !  The  veil  which  hides  the 
common  abyss,  in  sight  of  which  men  could  not  always  hold 
themselves  and  live,  is  rent  asunder,  and  he  looks  shuddering 
into  it. 

Then  the  image  changed,  and  in  its  stead,  that  old  familiar 
imam'  of  the  river  of  Death  took  possession  of  him.  He  stood 
himself  on  the  brink;  on  the  other  side  were  Grey  and  the 
squire.  But  he  felt  no  pang  of  separation,  of  pain  ;  for  he  him- 


592  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

self  was  just  about  to  cross  and  join  them !  And  during  a 
strange  brief  lull  of  feeling  the  mind  harboured  image  and  ex- 
pectation alike  with  perfect  calm. 

Then  the  fever-spell  broke — the  brain  cleared — and  he  was 
terribly  himself  again.  Whence  came  it — this  fresh  inexorable 
consciousness  ?  He  tried  to  repel  it,  to  forget  himself,  to  cling 
blindly,  without  thought,  to  God's  love  and  Catherine's.  But 
the  anguish  mounted  fast.  On  the  one  hand,  this  fast-growing 
certainty,  urging  and  penetrating  through  every  nerve  and 
fibre  of  the  shaken  frame  :  on  the  other,  the  ideal  fabric  of  his 
efforts  and  his  dreams,  the  New  Jerusalem  of  a  regenerate  faith  ; 
the  poor,  the  loving,  and  the  simple  walking  therein  ! 

'  My  God  !  my  God  !  no  time,  no  future  ! ' 

In  nis  misery  he  moved  to  the  uncovered  window,  and  stood 
looking  through  it,  seeing  and  not  seeing.  Outside,  the  river, 
just  filmed  with  ice,  shone  under  the  moon ;  over  it  bent  the 
trees,  laden  with  hoar-frost.  Was  that  a  heron,  rising  for  an 
instant,  beyond  the  bridge,  in  the  unearthly  blue  ? 

And  quietly — heavily — like  an  irrevocable  sentence,  there 
came:  breathed  to  him  as  it  were  from  that  winter  cold  and 
loneliness,  words  that  he  had  read  an  hour  or  two  before,  in  the 
little  red  book  beside  his  hand — words  in  which  the  gayest  of 
French  poets  has  fixed,  as  though  by  accident,  the  most  tragic 
of  all  human  cries — 

'  Quittez  le  long  espoir,  et  les  vastes  pensees.' 

He  sank  on  his  knees,  wrestling  with  himself  and  with  the 
bitter  longing  for  life,  and  the  same  words  rang  through  him, 
deafening  everv  cry  but  their  own. 

'  Quittez — quittez — le  long  espoir  et  les  vastes  pensees  I ' 


CHAPTER  LI 

THERE  is  little  more  to  tell.  The  man  who  had  lived  so  fast 
was  no  long  time  dying.  The  eager  soul  was  swift  in  this  as  in 
all  else. 

The  day  after  Elsmere's  return  from  Murewell,  where  he  left 
the  squire  still  alive  (the  telegram  announcing  the  death 
reached  Bedford  Square  a  few  hours  after  Robert's  arrival), 
Edmondson  came  up  to  see  him  and  examine  him.  He  discovered 
tubercular  disease  of  the  larynx,  which  begins  with  slight 
hoarseness  and  weakness,  and  develops  into  one  of  the  most 
rapid  forms  of  phthisis.  In  his  opinion  it  had  been  originally 
set  up  by  the  effects  of  the  chill  at  Petites  Dalles  acting  upon 
a  constitution  never  strong,  and  at  that  moment  peculiarly  sus- 
ceptible to  mischief.  And  of  course  the  speaking  and  preaching 
of  the  last  four  months  had  done  enormous  harm. 

It  was  with  great  outward  composure  that  Elsmere  received 


r 


CHAP.  LI  GAIN  AND  LOSS  593 

his  arret  de  mort  at  the  hands  of  the  young  doctor,  who  an- 
nounced the  result  of  his  examination  with  a  hesitating  lip  and 
a  voice  which  struggled  in  vain  to  preserve  its  professional 
calm.  He  knew  too  much  of  medicine  himself  to  be  deceived 
by  Edmondson's  optimist  remarks  as  to  the  possible  effect  of  a 
warm  climate  like  Algiers  on  his  condition.  He  sat  down, 
resting  his  head  on  his  hands  a  moment ;  then,  wringing  Ed- 
mondson's hand,  he  went  out  feebly  to  find  his  wife. 

Catherine  had  been  waiting  in  the  dining-room,  her  whole 
soul  one  dry  tense  misery.  She  stood  looking  out  of  the  window 
taking  curious  heed  of  a  Jewish  wedding  that  was  going  on  in 
the  square,  of  the  preposterous  bouquets  of  the  coachman  and 
the  gaping  circle  of  errand-boys.  How  pinched  the  bride 
looked  in  the  north  wind  ! 

When  the  door  opened  and  Catherine  saw  her  husband  come 
in — her  young  husband,  to  whom  she  had  been  married  not  yet 
four  years — with  that  indescribable  look  in  the  eyes  which 
seemed  to  divine  and  confirm  all  those  terrors  which  had  been 
shaking  her  during  her  agonised  waiting,  there  followed  a 
moment  between  them  which  words  cannot  render.  When  it 
ended — that  half -articulate  convulsion  of  love  and  anguish — she 
found  herself  sitting  on  the  sofa  beside  him,  his  head  on  her 
breast,  his  hand  clasping  hers. 

'  Do  you  wish  me  to  go,  Catherine  ? '  he  asked  her  gently, — 
'to  Algiers?' 

Her  eyes  implored  for  her. 

'  Then  I  will,'  he  said,  but  with  a  long  sigh.  '  It  will  only 
prolong  it  two  months,'  he  thought ;  '  and  does  one  not  owe  it  to 
the  people  for  whom  one  has  tried  to  live,  to  make  a  brave  end 
among  them  ?  Ah,  no  !  no  !  those  two  months  are  hers  I ' 

So,  without  any  outward  resistance,  he  let  the  necessary 
preparations  be  made.  It  wrung  his  heart  to  go,  but  he  could 
not  wring  hers  by  staying. 

After  his  interview  with  Robert,  and  his  further  interview 
with  Catherine,  to  whom  he  gave  the  most  minute  recommenda- 
tions and  directions,  with  a  reverent  gentleness  which  seemed 
kto  make  the  true  state  of  the  case  more  ghastly  plain  to  the 
wife  than  ever,  Edmondson  went  off  to  Flaxman. 

Flaxman  heard  his  news  with  horror. 

'  A  bad  case,  you  say — advanced  ? ' 

'  A  bad  case  ! '  Edmondson  repeated  gloomily.  '  He  has  been 
fighting  against  it  too  long  under  that  absurd  delusion  of 
clergyman's  throat.  If  only  "men  would  not  insist  upon  being 
their  own  doctors  !  And,  of  course,  that  going  down  to  Mure- 
well  the  other  day  was  madness.  I  shall  go  with  him  to  Algiers, 
and  probably  stay  a  week  or  two.  To  think  of  that  life,  that 
career,  cut  short !  This  is  a  queer  sort  of  world  ! ' 

When  Flaxman  went  over  to  Bedford  Square  in  the  after- 
noon, he  went  like  a  man  going  himself  to  execution.  In  the 
hall  he  met  Catherine. 

2Q 


594  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

'You  have  seen  Dr.  Edmondsqn ? '  she  asked,  pale  and  still, 
except  for  a  little  nervous  quivering  of  the  lip. 

He  stooped  and  kissed  her  hand. 

'Yes.  He  says  he  goes  with  you  to  Algiers.  I  will  come 
after  if  you  will  have  me.  The  climate  may  do  wonders.' 

She  looked  at  him  with  the  most  heart-rending  of  smiles. 

'  Will  you  go  in  to  Robert  ?    He  is  in  the  study.' 

He  went,  in  trepidation,  and  found  Robert  lying  tucked  up 
011  the  sofa,  apparently  reading. 

'  Don't — don't,  old  fellow,'  he  said  affectionately,  as  Flaxman 
almost  broke  down.  'It  comes  to  all  of  us  sooner  or  later. 
Whenever  it  comes  we  think  it  too  soon.  I  believe  I  have  been 
sure  of  it  for  some  time.  We  are  such  strange  creatures  !  It 
has  been  so  present  to  me  lately  that  life  was  too  good  to  last. 
You  remember  the  sort  of  feeling  one  used  to  have  as  a  child 
about  some  treat  in  the  distance — that  it  was  too  much  joy — 
that  something  was  sure  to  come  between  you  and  it  ?  Well, 
in  a  sense,  I  have  had  my  joy,  the  first-fruits  of  it  at  least.' 

But  as  he  threw  his  arms  behind  his  head,  leaning  back  on 
them,  Flaxman  saw  the  eyes  darken  and  the  naive  boyish 
mouth  contract,  and  knew  that  under  all  these  brave  words 
there  was  a  heart  which  hungered. 

'  How  strange  ! '  Robert  went  on  reflectively ;  '  yesterday  I 
was  travelling,  walking  like  other  men,  a  member  of  society. 
To-day  I  am  an  invalid ;  in  the  true  sense,  a  man  no  longer. 
The  world  has  done  with  me ;  a  barrier  I  shall  never  recross 
has  sprung  up  between  me  and  it. — Flaxman,  to-night  is  the 
story- telling.  Will  you  read  to  them  ?  I  have  the  book  here 
prepared — some  scenes  from  David  Copperfield.  And  you  will 
tell  them?' 

A  hard  task,  but  Flaxman  undertook  it.  Never  did  he  for- 
get the  scene.  Some  ominous  rumour  had  spread,  and  the  New 
Brotherhood  was  besieged.  Impossible  to  give  the  reading. 
A  hall  full  of  strained  upturned  faces  listened  to  Flaxman's 
announcement,  and  to  Elsrnere's  messages  of  cheer  and  exhorta- 
tion, and  then  a  wild  wave  of  grief  spread  through  the  place. 
The  street  outside  was  blocked,  men  looking  dismally  into  each 
other's  eyes,  women  weeping,  children  sobbing  for  sympathy, 
all  feeling  themselves  at  once  shelterless  and  forsaken.  When 
Elsmere  heard  the  news  of  it,  he  turned  on  his  face,  and  asked 
even  Catherine  to  leave  him  for  a  while. 

The  preparations  were  pushed  on.  The  New  Brotherhood 
had  just  become  the  subject  of  an  animated  discussion  in  the 
press,  and  London  was  touched  by  the  news  of  its  young 
founder's  breakdown.  Catherine  found  herself  besieged  by 
offers  of  help  of  various  kinds.  One  offer  Flaxman  persuaded 
her  to  accept.  It  was  the  loan  of  a  villa  at  El  Biar,  on  the  hill 
above  Algiers,  belonging  to  a  connection  of  his  own.  A  resi- 
dent on  the  spot  was  to  take  all  trouble  off  their  hands  ;  they 
were  to  find  servants  ready  for  them,  and  every  comfort. 


CHAP.  LI  GAIN  AND  LOSS  595 

Catherine  made  every  arrangement,  met  every  kindness,  with 
a  self-reliant  calm  that  never  failed.  But  it  seemed  to  Flax- 
man  that  her  heart  was  broken — that  half  of  her,  in  feeling, 
was  already  on  the  other  side  of  this  horror  which  stared  them 
all  in  the  face.  Was  it  his  perception  of  it  which  stirred  Robert 
after  a  while  to  a  greater  hopefulness  of  speech,  a  constant 
bright  dwelling  on  the  flowery  sunshine  for  which  they  were 
about  to  exchange  the  fog  and  cold  of  London  1  The  moment- 
ary revival  of  energy  was  more  pitiful  to  Flaxman  than  his 
first  quiet  resignation. 

He  himself  wrote  every  day  to  Rose.  Strange  love-letters  ! 
in  which  the  feeling  that  could  not  be  avowed  ran  as  a  fiery 
under-current  through  all  the  sad  brotherly  record  of  the 
invalid's  doings  and  prospects.  There  was  deep  trouble  in 
Long  Whindale.  Mrs.  Leyburn  was  tearful  and  hysterical, 
and  wished  to  rush  off  to  town  to  see  Catherine.  Agnes  wrote 
in  distress  that  her  mother  was  quite  unfit  to  travel,  showing 
her  own  inner  conviction,  too,  that  the  poor  thing  would  only 
be  an  extra  burden  on  the  Elsmeres  if  the  journey  were 
achieved.  Rose  wrote  asking  to  be  allowed  to  go  with  them 
to  Algiers ;  and  after  a  little  consultation  it  was  so  arranged, 
Mrs.  Leyburn  being  tenderly  persuaded,  Robert  himself  writing, 
to  stay  where  she  was. 

The  morning  after  the  interview  with  Edmondson,  Robert 
sent  for  Murray  Edwardes.  They  were  closeted  together  for 
nearly  an  hour.  Edwardes  came  out  with  the  look  of  one  who 
has  been  lifted  into  '  heavenly  places.' 

'  I  thank  God,'  he  said  to  Catherine,  with  deep  emotion,  '  that 
I  ever  knew  him.  I  pray  that  I  may  be  found  worthy  to  carry 
out  my  pledges  to  him.' 

When  Catherine  went  into  the  study  she  found  Robert  gaz- 
ing into  the  fire  with  dreamy  eyes.  He  started  and  looked  up 
to  her  with  a  smile. 

'  Murray  Edwardes  has  promised  himself  heart  and  soul  to 
the  work.  If  necessary,  he  will  give  up  his  chapel  to  carry  it 
on.  But  we  hope  it  will  be  possible  to  work  them  together. 
What  a  brick  he  is  !  What  a  blessed  chance  it  was  that  took 
me  to  that  breakfast  party  at  Flaxman's  ! ' 

The  rest  of  the  time  before  departure  he  spent  almost 
entirely  in  consultation  and  arrangement  with  Edwardes.  It 
was  terrible  how  rapidly  worse  he  seemed  to  grow  directly  the 
situation  had  declared  itself,  and  the  determination  not  to  be 
ill  had  been  perforce  overthrown.  But  his  struggle  against 
breathlessness  and  weakness,  and  all  the  other  symptoms  of 
his  state  during  these  last  days,  was  heroic.  On  the  last  day 
of  all,  by  his  own  persistent  wish,  a  certain  number  of  members 
of  the  Brotherhood  came  to  say  good-bye  to  him.  They  came 
in  one  by  one,  Macdonald  first.  The  old  Scotchman,  from  the 
height  of  his  sixty  years  of  tough  weather-beaten  manhood, 
looked  down  on  Robert  witli  a  fatherly  concern. 


596  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

'  Eh,  Mister  Elsmere,  but  it's  a  fine  place  yur  gawin'  tu,  they 
say.  Ye'll  do  weel  there,  sir — ye'll  do  weel.  And  as  for  the 
wark,  sir,  we'll  keep  it  oop — we'll  not  let  the  Deil  mak'  hay  o' 
it,  if  we  knaws  it — the  auld  leer ! '  he  added,  with  a  phrase- 
ology which  did  more  honour  to  the  Calvinism  of  his  blood 
than  the  philosophy  of  his  training. 

Lestrange  came  in,  with  a  pale  sharp  face,  and  said  little  in 
his  ten  minutes.  But  Robert  divined  in  him  a  sort  of  repressed 
curiosity  and  excitement  akin  to  that  of  Voltaire  turning  his 
feverish  eyes  towards  le  grand  secret.  'You,  who  preached  to 
us  that  consciousness,  and  God,  and  the  soul  are  the  only 
realities— are  you  so  sure  of  it  now  you  are  dying,  as  you  were 
in  health  ?  Are  your  courage,  your  certainty,  what  they  were?' 
These  were  the  sort  of  questions  that  seemed  to  underlie  the 
man's  spoken  words. 

There  was  something  trying  in  it,  but  Robert  did  his  best  to 
put  aside  his  consciousness  of  it.  He  thanked  him  for  his  help 
in  the  past,  and  implored  him  to  stand  by  the  young  society 
and  Mr.  Edwardes. 

'  I  shall  hardly  come  back,  Lestrange.  But  what  does  one 
man  matter  1  One  soldier  falls,  another  presses  forward.' 

The  watchmaker  rose,  then  paused  a  moment,  a  flush  passing 
over  him. 

'  We  can't  stand  without  you  ! '  he  said  abruptly ;  then,  see- 
ing Robert's  look  of  distress,  he  seemed  to  cast  about  for  some- 
thing reassuring  to  say,  but  could  find  nothing.  Robert  at 
last  held  out  his  hand  with  a  smile,  and  he  went.  He  left 
Elsmere  struggling  with  a  pang  of  horrible  depression.  In 
reality  there  was  no  man  who  worked  harder  at  the  New 
Brotherhood  during  the  months  that  followed  than  Lestrange. 
He  worked  under  perpetual  protest  from  thefrondeur  within 
him,  but  something  stung  him  on — on — till  a  habit  had  been 
formed  which  promises  to  be  the  joy  and  salvation  of  his  later 
life.  Was  it  the  haunting  memory  of  that  thin  figure — the 
hand  clinging  to  the  chair— the  white  appealing  look  ? 

Others  came  and  went,  till  Catherine  trembled  for  the  conse- 
quences. She  herself  took  in  Mrs.  Richards  and  her  children, 
comforting  the  sobbing  creatures  afterwards  with  a  calmness 
born  of  her  own  despair.  Robson,  in  the  last  stage  himself;  sent 
him  a  grimly  characteristic  message.  '  I  shall  solve  the  riddle, 
sir,  before  you.  The  doctor  gives  me  three  days.  For  the  first 
time  in  my  life,  I  shall  know  what  you  are  still  guessing  at. 
May  the  blessing  of  one  who  never  blessed  thing  or  creature 
before  he  saw  you  go  with  you  ! ' 

After  it  all  Robert  sank  on  the  sofa  with  a  groan. 

'  No  more  ! '  he  said  hoarsely — '  no  more  !  Now  for  air — the 
sea  !  To-morrow,  wife,  to-morrow  !  Cras  inqens  iterabimus 
cequor.  Ah  me  !  I  leave  my  new  Salamis  behind  ! ' 

But  on  that  last  evening  he  insisted  on  writing  letters  to 
Langham  and  Newcome. 


CHAP.  LI  GAIN  AND  LOSS  597 

'  I  will  spare  Langham  the  sight  of  me,'  he  said,  smiling  sadly. 
'  And  I  will  spare  myself  the  sight  of  Newcome — I  could  not 
bear  it,  I  think  !  But  I  must  say  good-bye — for  I  love  them 
both.' 

Next  day,  two  hours  after  the  Elsmeres  had  left  for  Dover,  a 
cab  drove  up  to  their  house  in  Bedford  Square,  and  Newcome 
descended  from  it.  '  Gone,  sir,  two  hours  ago,'  said  the  house- 
maid, and  the  priest  turned  away  with  an  involuntary  gesture 
of  despair.  To  his  dying  day  the  passionate  heart  bore  the 
burden  of  that  '  too  late,'  believing  that  even  at  the  eleventh 
hour  Elsmere  would  have  been  granted  to  his  prayers.  He 
might  even  have  followed  them,  but  that  a  great  retreat  for 
clergy  he. was  just  on  the  point  of  conducting  made  it  im- 
possible. 

Flaxman  went  down  with  them  to  Dover.  Rose,  in  the  midst 
of  all  her  new  and  womanly  care  for  her  sister  and  Robert,  was 
very  sweet  to  him.  In  any  other  circumstances,  he  told  himself, 
he  could  easily  have  broken  down  the  flimsy  barrier  between 
them,  but  in  those  last  twenty-four  hours  he  could  press  no 
claim  of  his  own. 

When  the  steamer  cast  loose,  the  girl,  hanging  over  the  side, 
stood  watching  the  tall  figure  on  the  pier  against  the  gray 
January  sky.  Catherine  caught  her  look  and  attitude,  and 
could  have  cried  aloud  in  her  own  gnawing  pain. 

Flaxman  got  a  cheery  letter  from  Edmondson  describing  their 
arrival.  Their  journey  had  gone  well ;  even  the  odious  passage 
from  Marseilles  had  been  tolerable  •  little  Mary  had  proved  a 
model  traveller  ;  the  villa  was  luxurious,  the  weather  good. 

'  I  have  got  rooms  close  by  them  in  the  Vice-Consul's  cottage,' 
wrote  Edmondson.  'Imagine,  within  sixty  hours  of  leaving 
London  in  a  January  fog,  finding  yourself  tramping  over  wild 
marigolds  and  mignonette,  under  a  sky  and  through  an  air  as 
balmy  as  those  of  an  English  June — when  an  English  June 
behaves  itself.  Elsmere's  room  overlooks  the  bay,  the  great 
plain  of  the  Metidja  dotted  with  villages,  and  the  grand  range 
of  the  Djurjura,  backed  by  snowy  summits  one  can  hardly  tell 
from  the  clouds.  His  spirits  are  marvellous.  He  is  plunged  in 
the  history  of  Algiers,  raving  about  one  Fromentin,  learning 
Spanish  even  !  The  wonderful  purity  and  warmth  of  the  air 
seem  to  have  relieved  the  larynx  greatly.  He  breathes  and 
speaks  much  more  easily  than  when  we  left  London.  I  some- 
times feel  when  I  look  at  him  as  though  in  this  as  in  all  else  he 
were  unlike  the  common  sons  of  men — as  though  to  him  it  might 
be  possible  to  subdue  even  this  fell  disease.' 

Elsmere  himself  wrote — 

"  I  had  not  heard  the  half " — O  Flaxman  !  An  enchanted 
land — air,  sun,  warmth,  roses,  orange  blossom,  new  potatoes, 
green  peas,  veiled  Eastern  beauties,  domed  mosques  and  preach- 
ing Mahdis — everything  that  feeds  the  outer  and  the  inner  man. 
To  throw  the  window  open  at  waking  to  the  depth  of  sunlit  air 


598  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

between  us  and  the  curve  of  the  bay,  is  for  the  moment  heaven  ! 
One's  soul  seems  to  escape  one,  to  pour  itself  into  the  luminous 
blue  of  the  morning.  I  am  better — I  breathe  again. 

'  Mary  flourishes  exceedingly.  She  lives  mostly  on  oranges, 
and  has  been  adopted  by  sixty  nuns  who  inhabit  the  convent 
over  the  way,  and  sell  us  the  most  delicious  butter  and  cream. 
I  imagine,  if  she  were  a  trifle  older,  her  mother  would  hardly 
view  the  proceedings  of  these  dear  berosaried  women 'with  so 
much  equanimity. 

'  As  for  Rose,  she  writes  more  letters  than  Clarissa,  and  re- 
ceives more  than  an  editor  of  the  Times.  I  have  the  strongest 
views,  as  you  know,  as  to  the  vanity  of  letter-writing.  There . 
was  a  time  when  you  shared  them,  but  there  are  circumstances 
and  conjunctures,  alas !  in  which  no  man  can  be  sure  of  his  friend 
or  his  friend's  principles.  Kind  friend,  good  fellow,  go  often  to 
Elgood  Street.  Tell  me  everything  about  everybody.  It  is 
possible,  after  all,  that  I  may  live  to  come  back  to  them.' 

But  a  week  later,  alas  !  the  letters  fell  into  a  very  different 
strain.  The  weather  had  changed,  had  turned  indeed  damp  and 
rainy,  the  natives  of  course  declaring  that  such  gloom  and  storm 
in  January  had  never  been  known  before.  Edmondson  wrote  in 
discouragement.  Elsmere  had  had  a  touch  of  cold,  had  been 
confined  to  bed,  and  almost  speechless.  His  letter  was  full  of 
medical  detail,  from  which  Flaxman  gathered  that,  in  spite  of 
the  rally  of  the  first  ten  days,  it  was  clear  that  the  disease  was 
attacking  constantly  fresh  tissue.  '  He  is  very  depressed  too,' 
said  Edmondson ;  'I  have  never  seen  him  so  yet.  He  sits  and 
looks  at  us  in  the  evening  sometimes  with  eyes  that  wring  one's 
heart.  It  is  as  though,  after  having  for  a  moment  allowed  him- 
self to  hope,  he  found  it  a  doubly  hard  task  to  submit.' 

All,  that  depression  !  It  was  the  last  eclipse  through  which 
a  radiant  soul  was  called  to  pass  ;  but  while  it  lasted  it  was 
black  indeed.  The  implacable  reality,  obscured  at  first  by  the 
emotion  and  excitement  of  farewells,  and  then  by  a  brief  spring 
of  hope  and  returning  vigour,  showed  itself  now  in  all  its  stern 
nakedness — sat  down,  as  it  were,  eye  to  eye  with  Elsmere — im- 
movable, ineluctable.  There  were  certain  features  of  the  disease 
itself  which  were  specially  trying  to  such  a  nature.  The  long 
silences  it  enforced  were  so  unlike  him,  seemed  already  to  with- 
draw him  so  pitifully  from  their  yearning  grasp  !  In  these  dark 
days  he  would  sit  crouching  over  the  wood  fire  in  the  little  salon, 
or  lie  drawn  to  the  window  looking  out  on  the  rainstorms  bow- 
ing the  ilexes  or  scattering  the  meshes  of  clematis,  silent,  almost 
always  gentle,  but  turning  sometimes  on  Catherine,  or  on  Mary 
playing  at  his  feet,  eyes  which,  as  Edmondson  said,  '  wrung  the 
heart.' 

But  in  reality,  under  the  husband's  depression,  and  under  the 
wife's  inexhaustible  devotion,  a  combat  was  going  on,  which 
reached  no  third  person,  but  was  throughout  poignant  and 
tragic  to  the  highest  degree.  Catherine  was  making  her  last 


CHAP.  LI  GAIN  AND  LOSS  599 

effort,  Robert  his  last  stand.  As  we  know,  ever  since  that  pas- 
sionate submission  of  the  wife  which  had  thrown  her  morally  at 
her  husband's  feet,  there  had  lingered  at  the  bottom  of  her  heart 
one  last  supreme  hope.  All  persons  of  the  older  Christian  type 
attribute  a  special  importance  to  the  moment  of  death.  While 
the  man  of  science  looks  forward  to  his  last  hour  as  a  moment  of 
certain  intellectual  weakness,  and  calmly  warns  his  friends  be- 
forehand that  he  is  to  be  judged  by  the  utterances  of  health  and 
not  by  those  of  physical  collapse,  the  Christian  believes  that  on 
the  confines  of  eternity  the  veil  of  flesh  shrouding  the  soul  grows 
thin  and  transparent,  and  that  the  glories  and  the  truths  of 
Heaven  are  visible  with  a  special  clearness  and  authority  to  the 
dying.  It  was  for  this  moment,  either  in  herself  or  in  him,  that 
Catherine's  unconquerable  faith  had  been  patiently  and  dumbly 
waiting.  Either  she  would  go  first,  and  death  would  wing  her 
poor  last  words  to  him  with  a  magic  and  power  not  their  own  ; 
or,  when  he  came  to  leave  her,  the  veil  of  doubt  would  fall  away 
perforce  from  a  spirit  as  pure  as  it  was  humble,  and  the  eternal 
light,  the  light  of  the  Crucified,  shine  through. 

Probably,  if  there  had  been  no  breach  in  Robert's  serenity, 
Catherine's  poor  last  effort  would  have  been  much  feebler, 
briefer,  more  hesitating.  But  when  she  saw  him  plunged  for  a 
short  space  in  mortal  discouragement,  in  a  sombreness  that  as 
the  days  went  on  had  its  points  and  crests  of  feverisli  irritation, 
her  anguished  pity  came  to  the  help  of  her  creed.  Robert  felt 
himself  besieged,  driven  within  the  citadel,  her  being  urging, 
grappling  with  his.  In  little  half -articulate  words  and  ways,  in 
her  attempts  to  draw  him  back  to  some  of  their  old  religious 
books  and  prayers,  in  those  kneeling  vigils  he  often  found  her 
maintaining  at  night  beside  him,  he  felt  a  persistent  attack 
which  nearly — in  his  weakness — overthrew  him. 

For  '  reason  and  thought  grow  tired  like  muscles  and  nerves. 
Some  of  the  greatest  and  most  daring  thinkers  of  the  world 
have  felt  this  pitiful  longing  to  be  at  one  with  those  who  love 
them,  at  whatever  cost,  before  the  last  farewell.  And  the 
simpler  Christian  faith  has  still  to  create  around  it  those 
venerable  associations  and  habits  which  buttress  individual 
feebleness  and  diminish  the  individual  effort. 

One  early  February  morning,  just  before  dawn,  Robert 
stretched  out  his  hand  for  his  wife  and  found  her  kneeling 
beside  him.  The  dim  mingled  light  showed  him  her  face 
vaguely — her  clasped  hands,  her  eyes.  He  looked  at  her  in 
silence,  she  at  him ;  there  seemed  to  be  a  strange  shock  as  of 
battle  between  them.  Then  he  drew  her  head  down  to  him. 

'  Catherine,'  he  said  to  her  in  a  feeble  intense  whisper, '  would 
you  leave  me  without  comfort,  without  help,  at  the  end  ? ' 

'  Oh,  my  beloved  ! '  she  cried,  under  her  breath,  throwing  her 
arms  round  him,  '  if  you  would  but  stretch  out  your  hand  to 
the  true  comfort — the  true  .help — the  Lamb  of  God  sacrificed 
for  us ! ' 


600  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

He  stroked  her  hair  tenderly. 

'  My  weakness  might  yield — my  true  best  self  never.  I  know 
Whom  I  have  believed.  Oh,  my  darling,  be  content.  Your 
misery,  your  prayers  hold  me  back  from  God — from  that  truth 
and  that  trust  which  can  alone  be  honestly  mine.  Submit,  my 
wife  !  Leave  me  in  God's  hands.' 

She  raised  her  head.  His  eyes  were  bright  with  fever,  his 
lips  trembling,  his  whole  look  heavenly.  She  bowed  herself 
again  with  a  quiet  burst  of  tears,  and  an  indescribable  self- 
abasement.  They  had  had  their  last  struggle,  and  once  more 
he  had  conquered  !  Afterwards  the  cloud  lifted  from  him. 
Depression  and  irritation  disappeared.  It  seemed  to  her  often 
as  though  he  lay  already  on  the  breast  of  God  ;  even  her  wifely 
love  grew  timid  and  awestruck. 

Yet  he  did  not  talk  much  of  immortality,  of  reunion.  It  was 
like  a  scrupulous  child  that  dares  not  take  for  granted  more 
than  its  father  has  allowed  it  to  know.  At  the  same  time,  it 
was  plain  to  those  about  him  that  the  only  realities  to  him  in  a 
world  of  shadows  were  God — love — the  soul. 

One  day  he  suddenly  caught  Catherine's  hands,  drew  her 
face  to  him,  and  studied  it  with  his  glowing  and  hollow  eyes, 
as  though  he  would  draw  it  into  his  soul. 

'  He  made  it,'  he  said  hoarsely,  as  he  let  her  go — '  this  love — 
this  yearning.  And  in  life  He  only  makes  us  yearn  that  He 
may  satisfy.  He  cannot  lead  us  to  the  end  and  disappoint  the 
craving  He  Himself  set  in  us.  No,  no— ^could  you — could  I — do 
it  1  And  He,  the  source  of  love,  of  justice : 

Flaxman  arrived  a  few  days  afterwards.  Edmondson  had 
started  for  London  the  night  before,  leaving  Elsmere  better 
again,  able  to  drive  and  even  walk  a  little,  and  well  looked 
after  by  a  local  doctor  of  ability.  As  Flaxman,  tramping  up 
behind  his  carriage,  climbed  the  long  hill  to  El  Biar,  he  saw  the 
whole  marvellous  place  in  a  white  light  of  beauty — the  bay,  the 
city,  the  mountains,  oliveyard  and  orange-grove,  drawn  in  pale 
tints  on  luminous  air.  Suddenly,  at  the  entrance  of  a  steep 
and  narrow  lane,  he  noticed  a  slight  figure  standing — a  parasol 
against  the  sun. 

'  We  thought  you  would  like  to  be  shown  the  short  cut  up 
the  hill,'  said  Rose's  voice,  strangely  demure  and  shy.  'The 
man  can  drive  round.' 

A  grip  of  the  hand,  a  word  to  the  driver,  and  they  were  alone 
in  the  high-walled  lane,  which  was  really  the  old  road  up  the 
hill,  before  the  French  brought  zigzags  and  civilisation.  She 
gave  him  news  of  Robert — better  than  he  had  expected.  Under 
the  influence  of  one  of  the  natural  reactions  that  wait  on  illness, 
the  girl's  tone  was  cheerful,  and  Flaxman's  spirits  rose.  They 
talked  of  the  splendour  of  the  day,  the  discomforts  of  the 
steamer,  the  picturesqueness  of  the  landing — of  anything  and 
everything  but  the  hidden  something  which  was  responsible  for 


CHAP.  LI  GAIN  AND  LOSS  601 

the  dancing  brightness  in  his  eyes,  the  occasional  swift  veiling 
of  her  own. 

Then,  at  an  angle  of  the  lane,  where  a  little  spring  ran  cool 
and  brown  into  a  moss-grown  trough,  where  the  blue  broke 
joyously  through  the  gray  cloud  of  olive-wood,  where  not  a 
sight  or  sound  was  to  be  heard  of  all  the  busy  life  which  hides 
and  nestles  along  the  hill,  he  stopped,  his  hands  seizing  hers. 

'  How  long  ? '  he  said,  flushing,  his  light  overcoat  falling  back 
from  his  strong,  well-made  frame  ;  '  from  August  to  February — 
how  long  ? ' 

No  more  !  It  was  most  natural,  nay,  inevitable.  For  the 
moment  death  stood  aside  and  love  asserted  itself.  But  this  is 
no  place  to  chronicle  what  it  said. 

And  he  had  hardly  asked,  and  she  had  hardly  yielded,  before 
the  same  misgiving,  the  same  shrinking,  seized  on  the  lovers 
themselves.  They  sped  up  the  hill,  they  crept  into  the  house, 
far  apart.  It  was  agreed  that  neither  of  them  should  say  a 
word. 

But,  with  that  extraordinarily  quick  perception  that  some- 
times goes  witli  such  a  state  as  his,  Elsmere  had  guessed  the 
position  of  things  before  he  and  Flaxman  had  been  half  an  hour 
together.  He  took  a  boyish  pleasure  in  making  his  friend  con- 
fess himself,  and,  when  Flaxman  left  him,  at  once  sent  for 
Catherine  and  told  her. 

Catherine,  coming  out  afterwards,  met  Flaxman  in  the  little 
tiled  hall.  How  she  had  aged  and  blanched  !  She  stood  a 
moment  opposite  to  him,  in  her  plain  long  dress  with  its  white 
collar  and  cuffs,  her  face  working  a  little. 

'  We  are  so  glad  ! '  she  said,  but  almost  with  a  sob — '  God 
bless  you  ! ' 

And,  wringing  his  hand,  she  passed  away  from  him,  hiding 
her  eyes,  but  without  a  sound.  When  they  met  again  she  was 
quite  self-contained  and  bright,  talking  much  both  with  him 
and  Rose  about  the  future. 

And  one  little  word  of  Rose's  must  be  recorded  here,  for 
those  who  have  followed  her  through  these  four  years.  It  was 
at  night,  when  Robert,  with  smiles,  had  driven  them  out  of 
doors  to  look  at  the  moon  over  the  bay,  from  the  terrace  just 
beyond  the  windows.  They  had  been  sitting  on  the  balustrade 
talking  of  Elsmere.  In  this  nearness  to  death,  Rose  had  lost 
her  mocking  ways ;  but  she  was  shy  and  difficult,  and  Flaxman 
felt  it  all  very  strange,  and  did  not  venture  to  woo  her  much. 

When,  all  at  once,  he  felt  her  hand  steal  trembling,  a  little 
white  suppliant,  into  his,  and  her  face  against  his  shoulder. 

'  You  won't — you  won't  ever  be  angry  with  me  for  making 
you  wait  like  that  ?  It  was  impertinent — it  was  like  a  child 
playing  tricks  !' 

Flaxman  was  deeply  shocked  by  the  change  in  Robert.     He 


602  ROBERT.  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

was  terribly  emaciated.  They  could  only  talk  at  rare  intervals 
in  the  day,  and  it  was  clear  that  his  nights  were  often  one  long 
struggle  for  breath.  But  his  spirits  were  extraordinarily  even, 
and  his  days  occupied  to  a  point  Flaxman  could  hardly  have 
believed.  He  would  creep  downstairs  at  eleven,  read  his  Eng- 
lish letters  (among  them  always  some  from  Elgood  Street), 
write  his  answers  to  them — those  difficult  scrawls  are  among 
the  treasured  archives  of  a  society  which  is  fast  gathering  to 
itself  some  of  the  best  life  in  England — then  often  fall  asleep 
with  fatigue.  After  food  there  would  come  a  short  drive,  or, 
if  the  day  was  very  warm,  an  hour  or  two  of  sitting  outside, 
generally  his  best  time  for  talking.  He  had  a  wheeled  chair  in 
which  Flaxman  would  take  him  across  to  the  convent  garden — 
a  dream  of  beauty.  Overhead  an  orange  canopy  —  leaf  and 
blossom  and  golden  fruit  all  in  simultaneous  perfection  ;  under- 
neath a  revel  of  every  imaginable  flower — narcissus  and  ane- 
mones, geraniums  and  clematis ;  and  all  about,  hedges  of 
monthly  roses,  dark  red  and  pale  alternately,  making  a  roseleaf 
carpet  under  their  feet.  Through  the  tree -trunks  shone  the 
white  sun-warmed  convent,  and  far  beyond  were  glimpses  of 
downward-trending  valleys  edged  by  twinkling  sea. 

Here,  sensitive  and  receptive  to  his  last  hour,  Elsmere  drank 
in  beauty  and  delight  ;•  talking,  too,  whenever  it  was  possible 
to  him,  of  all  things  in  heaven  and  earth.  Then,  when  he  came 
home,  he  would  have  out  his  books  and  fall  to  some  old  critical 
problem — his  worn  and  scored  Greek  Testament  always  beside 
him,  the  quick  eye  making  its  way  through  some  new  mono- 
graph or  other,  the  parched  lips  opening  every  now  and  then 
to  call  Flaxman's  attention  to  some  fresh  light  on  an  obscure 
point — only  to  relinquish  the  effort  again  and  again  with  an 
unfailing  patience. 

But  though  he  would  begin  as  ardently  as  ever,  he  could  not 
keep  his  attention  fixed  to  these  things  very  long.  Then  it 
would  be  the  turn  of  his  favourite  poets— Wordsworth,  Tenny- 
son, Virgil.  Virgil  perhaps  most  frequently.  Flaxman  would 
read  the  vEneid  aloud  to  him,  Robert  following  the  passages  he 
loved  best  in  a  whisper,  his  hand  resting  the  while  in  Catherine's. 
And  then  Mary  would  be  brought  in,  and  he  would  lie  watching 
her  while  she  played. 

'  I  have  had  a  letter,'  he  said  to  Flaxman  one  afternoon,  '  from 
a  Broad  Church  clergyman  in  the  Midlands,  who  imagines  me 
to  be  still  militant  in  London,  protesting  against  the  "  absurd 
and  wasteful  isolation"  of  the  New  Brotherhood.  He  asks  me 
why  instead  of  leaving  the  Church  I  did  not  join  the  Church 
Reform  Union,  why  I  did  not  attempt  to  widen  the  Church 
from  within,  and  why  we  in  Elgood  Street  are  not  now  in 
organic  connection  with  the  new  Broad  Church  settlement  in 
East  London.  I  believe  I  have  written  him  rather  a  sharp 
letter  ;  I  could  not  help  it.  It  was  borne  in  on  me  to  tell  him 
that  it  is  all  owing  to  him  and  his  brethren  that  we  are  in  the 


CHAP.  LI  GAIN  AND  LOSS  603 

muddle  we  are  in  to-day.  Miracle  is  to  our  time  what  the  law 
was  to  the  early  Christians.  We  must  make  up  our  minds  about 
it  one  way  or  the  other.  And  if  we  decide  to  throw  it  over  as 
Paul  threw  over  the  law,  then  we  must  fight  as  he  did.  There 
is  no  help  in  subterfuge,  no  help  in  anything  but  a  perfect 
sincerity.  We  must  come  out  of  it.  The  ground  must  be 
cleared ;  then  may  come  the  re-building.  Religion  itself,  the 
peace  of  generations  to  come,  is  at  stake.  If  we  could  wait 
indefinitely  while  the  Church  widened,  well  and  good.  But  we 
have  but  the  one  life,  the  one  chance  of  saying  the  word  or 
playing  the  part  assigned  us.' 

On  another  occasion,  in  the  convent  garden,  be  broke  out 
with — 

'  I  often  lie  here,  Flaxman,  wondering  at  the  way  in  which 
men  become  the  slaves  of  some  metaphysical  word — personality, 
or  intelligence,  or  what  not !  What  meaning  can  they  have  as 
applied  to  God  ?  Herbert  Spencer  is  quite  right.  We  no  sooner 
attempt  to  define  what  we  mean  by  a  Personal  God  than  we 
lose  ourselves  in  labyrinths  of  language  and  logic.  But  why 
attempt  it  at  all  ?  I  like  that  French  saying,  "  Quand  on  me 
demande  ce  que  c'est  que  Dieu,  je  Fianore ;  quand  on  ne  me  le 
demande  pas,  je  le  sais  tres-bien!"  No,  we  cannot  realise  Him 
in  words — we  can  only  live  in  Him,  and  die  to  Him  ! ' 

On  another  occasion,  he  said,  speaking  to  Catherine  of  the 
squire  and  of  Meyrick's  account  of  his  last  year  of  life — 

'  How  selfish  one  is,  always — when  one  least  thinks  it !  How 
could  I  have  forgotten  him  so  completely  as  I  did  during  all 
that  New  Brotherhood  time  ?  Where,  what  is  he  now  ?  Ah  !  if 
somewhere,  somehow,  one  could ' 

He  did  not  finish  the  sentence,  but  the  painful  yearning  of 
his  look  finished  it  for  him. 

But  the  days  passed  on,  and  the  voice  grew  rarer,  the  strength 
feebler.  By  the  beginning  of  March  all  coming  downstairs  was 
over.  He  was  entirely  confined  to  his  room,  almost  to  his  bed. 
Then  there  came  a  horrible  week,  when  no  narcotics  took  effect, 
when  every  night  was  a  wrestle  for  life,  which  it  seemed  must 
be  the  last.  They  had  a  good  nurse,  but  Flaxman  and  Catherine 
mostly  shared  the  watching  between  them. 

One  morning  he  had  just  dropped  into  a  fevered  sleep. 
Catherine  was  sitting  by  the  window  gazing  out  into  a  dawn- 
world  of  sun  which  reminded  her  of  the  summer  sunrises  at 
Petites  Dalles.  She  looked  the  shadow  of  herself.  Spiritually, 
too,  she  was  the  shadow  of  herself.  Her  life  was  no  longer  her 
own :  she  lived  in  him — in  every  look  of  those  eyes — in  every 
movement  of  that  wasted  frame. 

As  she  sat  there,  her  Bible  on  her  knee,  her  strained  unseeing 
gaze  resting  on  the  garden  and  the  sea,  a  sort  of  hallucination 
took  possession  of  her.  It  seemed  to  her  that  she  saw  the  form 
of  the  Son  of  man  passing  over  the  misty  slope  in  front  of  her, 
that  the  dim  majestic  figure  turned  and  beckoned.  In  her  half- 


604  ROBERT  ELSMERE  BOOK  vn 

dream  she  fell  on  her  knees.  '  Master  ! '  she  cried  in  agony,  '  I 
cannot  leave  him  !  Call  me  not !  My  life  is  here.  I  have  no 
heart — it  beats  in  his.' 

And  the  figure  passed  on,  the  beckoning  hand  dropping  at  its 
side.  She  followed  it  with  a  sort  of  anguish,  but  it  seemed  to 
her  as  though  mind  and  body  were  alike  incapable  of  moving — 
that  she  would  not  if  she  could.  Then  suddenly  a  sound  from 
behind  startled  her.  She  turned,  her  trance  shaken  off  in  an 
instant,  and  saw  Robert  sitting  up  in  bed. 

For  a  moment  her  lover,  her  husband,  of  the  early  days  was 
before  her — as  she  ran  to  him.  But  he  did  not  see  her. 

An  ecstasy  of  joy  was  on  his  face;  the  whole  man  bent 
forward  listening. 

'  The  child's  cry  ! — thank  God  !  Oh  I  Meyrick — Catherine — 
thank  God  I ' 

And  she  knew  that  he  stood  again  on  the  stairs  at  Murewell 
in  that  September  night  which  gave  them  their  first-born,  and 
that  he  thanked  God  because  her  pain  was  over. 

An  instant's  strained  looking,  and,  sinking  back  into  her 
arms,  he  gave  two  or  three  gasping  breaths,  and  died. 

Five  days  later  Flaxman  and  Rose  brought  Catherine  home. 
It  was  supposed  that  she  would  return  to  her  mother  at  Bur- 
wood.  Instead,  she  settled  down  again  in  London,  and  not  one 
of  those  whom  Robert  Elsmere  had  loved  was  forgotten  by  his 
widow.  Every  Sunday  morning,  with  her  child  beside  her,  she 
worshipped  in  the  old  ways ;  every  Sunday  afternoon  saw  her 
black-veiled  figure  sitting  motionless  in  a  corner  of  the  Elgood 
Street  Hall.  In  the  week  she  gave  all  her  time  and  money  to 
the  various  works  of  charity  which  he  had  started.  But  she 
held  her  peace.  Many  were  grateful  to  her  ;  some  loved  her ; 
none  understood  her.  She  lived  for  one  hope  only ;  and  the 
years  passed  all  too  slowly. 

The  New  Brotherhood  still  exists,  and  grows.  There  are 
many  who  imagined  that  as  it  had  been  raised  out  of  the  earth 
by  Elsmere's  genius,  so  it  would  sink  with  him.  Not  so  !  He 
would  have  fought  the  struggle  to  victory  with  surpassing 
force,  with  a  brilliancy  and  rapidity  none  after  him  could  rival. 
But  the  struggle  was  not  his.  His  effort  was  but  a  fraction  of 
the  effort  of  the  race.  In  that  effort,  and  in  the  Divine  force 
behind  it,  is  our  trust,  as  was  his. 

'  Others,  I  doubt  not,  if  not  we, 
The  issue  of  our  toils  shall  see  ; 
And  (they  forgotten  and  unknown) 
Young  children  gather  as  their  own 
The  harvest  that  the  dead  had  sown. 


THK  END 


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